Browsing by Author "Mashebe, Percy Mashebe"
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- ItemThe perceived competencies and needs of secondary school agricultural science teachers in the Zambezi Region, Namibia(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2018-12) Mashebe, Percy Mashebe; Le Grange, LesleyENGLISH SUMMARY : The study assessed secondary schools’ Agricultural Science teachers’ competencies and needs with a view to making recommendations for improving Agricultural Science teacher education in the Zambezi region of Namibia. It specifically aimed to determine what the perceived competencies of male and female as well as experienced and less experienced teachers were in teaching and conducting practical experiments in Agricultural Science at the secondary school level. The study also set out to determine the professional needs of male and female as well as experienced and less experienced Agricultural Science teachers that might be necessary to enable them to keep abreast of contemporary issues facing Agricultural Science in combined (from grade 1 to 10) and secondary (from grade 8 to 12) schools. The Agricultural Science teachers were sampled based on gender (males and females) and teaching experience (<3 years and >3 years). This study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The research instruments used for data collection included teachers’ questionnaires and follow-up interview guides. The target population of this study comprised all combined and secondary school Agricultural Science teachers (150 teachers in total i.e. 82 males and 68 females) in 65 secondary schools in the Zambezi region; 142 Agricultural Science teachers out of 150 teachers participated in the study using questionnaires. Purposive sampling was used to select teachers for participation in the follow-up interviews that probed more deeply into teachers’ needs and competencies. After preliminary analysis of the questionnaires, 12 sub-samples (consisting of six male and six female Agricultural Science teachers) of the teachers were purposively selected and interviewed. Content validity was used to establish the extent to which the research instrument covered the domains that are being tested. The reliability of the quantitative survey instrument was determined statistically by calculating the Cronbach Alpha coefficient. The research instruments were also tested for content validity by giving the questionnaires and interview question items to a panel of peers for scrutiny. Quantitative data generated in this study were analysed using descriptive statistics provided by the Statisica 13 computer software programme. Chi square tests and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to determine whether there are significant differences in the frequency distributions on each of the perceived competencies and needs. Four hypotheses were tested in the study at 0.05 level of significance. Findings revealed that 18 out of 20 (90%) proposed needs between male and female Agricultural Science teachers were not statistically significant (p>0.05). The findings of this study further revealed that 13 out of 20 needs were not statistically significant (p<0.05), while seven needs were statistically significant (p>0.05) between less experienced (< 3 years) and more experienced (> 3 years) teachers. With regard to the perceived competencies, the findings of this study revealed that there were no gender and teaching experience differences for all competencies tested. For that reason, the study proffered that male and female Agricultural Science teachers in schools studied had perhaps acquired virtually comparable quality and level of training. Therefore, percentages were calculated and presented in frequency tables, histograms and bar charts. Data from the follow-up interviews were analysed thematically and presented in the form of themes based on the research objectives. Therefore, the results of the study from the participants interviewed revealed that the majority (67%) of the participants said that the needs were more or less equally similar among Agricultural Science teachers irrespective of gender and years of teaching experience. The results of the study with regard to gender competencies further established that females were more challenged when it came to the practical component of teaching Agricultural Science. Therefore, the study recommends that further studies should be conducted to establish what the actual competencies of female, male, experienced, and less experienced Agricultural Science teachers are in the Zambezi region of Namibia.