Teaching Professionalism: Comparison of Teachers in Training

ABSTRACT


INTRODUCTION
Teacher Education aims to produce effective and efficient teachers through its programme. So that we can accomplish this, students of the Faculty of Education and Colleges of Education are instructed with content that enables them to get the required pedagogical content knowledge. Mostly, they study other courses in other disciplines in combination with their education courses. The knowledge they get from other disciplines equips them with the needed content, and that which they get from education equips them with the needed teaching pedagogy. It is through the education courses that they acquire the needed teaching skills. After been instructed/taught the needed skills, they are made to practice the skills in their various schools during coursework before being sent out for teaching. This was formerly done in two traditional ways: school experience and teaching observation (Brown, 1975, Allen & Ryan, 1969, McKnight, 1980. In school experience, the institutions send out their students on block teaching practice after they have been exposed to their theoretical courses. This aims to enable the pre-service teachers to learn how to teach. They are made to teach under regular classroom teaching or conditions and sometimes under the watch of a supervisor who evaluates their performances. Whereas in teaching observation, the trainee/pre-service teachers are made to observe master teachers in classrooms as they teach. Due to its shortcomings, micro-teaching emerged as a viable alternative. Micro-teaching is scale-down teaching for trainee/pre-service teachers to acquire and practice the needed teaching skills. It is scaled down regarding time spent teaching, the number of students to be taught and the number of skills to be practised. Trainee / pre-service teachers are made to practice the teaching skills severally, and they are videotaped and made to watch themselves during microteaching. The training /pre-service teachers repeat the skills after the critique sessions. This will help them to master teaching skills. The students are sent out for teaching practice when the microteaching is finally over. The training on micro-teaching is important since teaching effectiveness is regarded as a core issue in education (zhu and Kaiser, 2022).
Teaching practice connotes a practical teaching exercise that pre-service or teacher trainees are exposed to in a normal teaching classroom, and professionals supervise them during the practical teaching. One of the furthermost crucial parts or aspects of teacher education programme is designed to expose pre-service teachers to the practical aspects of the profession (Oluwatayo &Adebule, 2012). Literature has emphasised the importance of teaching practice in improving students' learning outcomes/achievement (Cooper, 2014;Hospe, Galand, 2016;Wentzel, 2016). The pre-service teachers are anticipated to plan their lessons before teaching during this period. According to Oluwatayo and Adebule (2012), in planning the lesson, they must formulate concise and achievable learning objectives and organise content and technical language of expression. The lesson objective expresses what the students will achieve after the lesson. They are stated using action words. The preservice teachers are made to undergo the teaching practiceexercise before graduating from the teacher training institutions to be adequately trained for the teaching job. Given this, this study investigated if any difference exists between the first and second teaching practice exercise of preservice /trainee teachers of Delta State University, Abraka.

What difference exists between students' first and second
teaching practice rating scores? 2. What difference exists between male and female students' first teaching practice rating scores? 3. What difference exists between students' first and second teaching practice rating scores based on the course of study?
Hypotheses H01: No significant difference exists between students' first and second teaching practice rating scores. H02: There is no significant difference between male and female students' first teaching practice rating scores. H03: There is no significant difference between students' first and second teaching practice rating scores based on the course of study.

II. METHODOLOGY
The study employed the Expost Facto design. This design is appropriate for students who have already been observed and evaluated during the teaching and supervision exercises. The students' rated scores were compared with the students' first and second teaching practice exercises. The sample for students consists of one hundred and thirty -five students from three units in Science Education department of Delta State University Abraka.

RQ1:
What difference exists between students' first and second-teaching practice-rated scores?  Table 1 shows that the students' rated mean at the first teaching practice is 60.76; the second teaching practice rated mean is 62.82. The difference between the two rated means is 2.06, with the second teaching practice rated mean being the highest. H01: No significant difference exists between students' first and second teaching practice scores.  Table 2 shows that the differences between the first and second teaching practice rated mean are not significant since the calculated sign value of 0.166 is higher than the critical sig value of 0.05. with this, H01 of no significant difference between students first and second teaching practice is therefore retained.

RQ2:
What difference exists between the first teaching practice-rated of male and female students?  Table 3 shows that the male students' mean at first teaching practice is 60.22, and the female students' first teaching practice mean is 61.03. The difference between the two rated means is 0.82. For the second teaching practice, it can be deduced that the male students rated mean is 63.26, and the female students rated mean is 62.58. The difference of the two rated means is 0.68, with the female students having the highest rated mean at both the first and second teaching practice exercises.
H02: There is no significant difference between students' first and second teaching practice by gender.  Table 4 shows that the difference between the male and female students' 1st and 2nd teaching practice-rated scores is insignificant since the calculated sig value of 0.06 is greater than the critical sig value of 0.05. With this, H02 of no significant difference between male and female students' first and second teaching practice is retained.

RQ3
: What difference exists between students' first and second teaching practice based on the course of study? indicates that the chemistry Education students also had the highest-rated teaching practice mean scores at the first and second teaching practice exercise.
H03: There is no significant difference in the first and second teaching practice scores of students as regards unit of study.  Table 6 shows that the difference between the first and second teaching practices is not significant since the calculated sign value of 0.074 is higher than the critical sig value of 0.05. With this, H03, which says no significant difference between the students' first and second teaching practice scores based on the course of study, is retained.

IV. DISCUSSION
The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate how well pre-service teachers performed during a six-week teaching experience/practice. No statistically significant difference existed between students' 1st and 2nd teaching practice performance, as indicated in Table 2. This may be the case since student-teachers were well instructed on teaching skills during their micro-teaching classes and required to practice them. It is also possible that they followed the pedagogical principles of effective teaching and exposure to an orientation programme where they had been instructed on the relevance of teaching practice to teacher education. This finding is consistent with that of Oluwatayo and Adebule (2012), who found that student-teachers prior teaching experience did not significantly affect their subsequent teaching effectiveness and that of Wojtek, Xiang, Huang, Western, McCourt and McCarthy (2022), who reported that learning time has a positive influence on performance.
Worth noting is that in both (first and second) teaching practice exercises, there was no statistically significant difference in practice score performance between male and female student teachers, as indicated in Table 4; since teaching is seen as a feminine job in Nigeria, it is expected that female students will perform significantly better than their male counterparts. This lack of significant performance differences indicates that both sexes benefitted equally from the courses, which exposed them to teaching methodology and skills and their orientation programmes. This finding suggests that student-teachers gender or sex did not influence how well they taught. Similar research in this area, such as that of Ohikena and Anam (1994), also failed to find a significant difference in the teaching effectiveness of males and females in secondary education in Nigeria, which is consistent with the findings of Oluwatayo and Adebule (2012). Avaliable at: www.ijssers.org More so, the finding in Table 3 revealed a nonsignificant difference in students' performance as regards their course of study. It is expected that students in biology Education with more females would do well than their male counterparts since teaching is regarded as a famine job. This finding is rational since the students are exposed to the same course content and learning experiences regardless of their course. The finding indicates that they all benefited equally from these learning exercise, experiences and contents.
Lastly, the result in Table 6 revealed that students did not perform differently based on those admitted through the direct entry and University Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (UTME). Students who came in through direct entry are projected to outperform their UTME counterparts, having been exposed to the teaching practice experience or exercise during NCE days. The finding indicates that the previous teaching practice does not influence subsequent ones. This finding confirmed that of Adu, Osatimehin and Sowunmi (2013), whose findings revealed a non-significant difference.

V. CONCLUSION
• Prior student-teacher teaching experience did not influence their teaching performance in the second observation, even though the students had a higher mean in the second observation. • Sex did not influence students' teaching practice outcome/performance though the male students had a higher mean score in the second observation. • The influence or effect of the course of study was not felt on students teaching practice exercise/ performance.

VI. RECOMMENDATION
It is recommended that the time spent on teaching practice be elongated so teaching practice students can spend more time practising teaching.