ABSTRACT
This study was set to examine the
effects of mentoring on regular teachers’ self-efficacy and attitude towards
the implementation of inclusive education at the upper basic educa-tion in
Gombe State, Nigeria. In Nigeria, the Universal Basic Education (UBE) scheme
was introduced to ensure among others that all children of school going age,
disability notwithstanding have unfettered access to basic education. The study
intended among others to determine the effects of mentoring on regular
teachers’ self -efficacy and attitude towards the implementation of inclusive
education at UB education in Gombe State. The study was premised on eight
purposes of study, research questions and null hypotheses. The study adopted
the quasi experimental research design. The population of the study was made up
of 839 UB education regular teachers in Gombe State and 42 UB teachers were
sampled through simple random and multi-stage sampling techniques. Data were
collected through the use of Teachers’ Self- Efficacy Scale (TSES) and Teachers
’ Attitude Scale (TAS) developed by the researcher. The instruments were
validated by three ex-perts and trial tested outside the study area. Cronbach’s
Alpha method of reliability was used to establish the internal consistency of
the instruments and reliability estimate of 0.84 and 0.86 were obtained for
TSES and TAS respectively. Mentoring package devel-oped by the researcher was
administered by an expert to the treatment group only while those in the
control group had placebo treatment with the researcher on legal and policy
framework of inclusive education. The TSES and TAS were administered by the
re-searcher to the subjects as pre -test and post-test. Data collected were
analyzed using de-scriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) for answering
the research questions and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the
hypotheses. Finding of the study revealed that mentoring significantly improved
regular teachers’ self-efficacy in the implementation of inclusive education at
UB education in Gombe State. The study also revealed among others that gender
was not a significant factor on regular teachers ’ self-efficacy in the
implementation of inclusive education at UB education in Gombe State. Also
school location was not a significant factor on regular teachers’ self-efficacy
in the implementation of inclusive education at UB education in Gombe State. It
is the recom-mendation of the researcher that mentorship should be
institutionalized at school level for regular teachers for successful
implementation of inclusive education in Nigeria. The findings of the work
imply that educational institutions charged with the responsibility of training
teachers should try to organize mentorship program for pre -service teachers in
their institutions in order to increase their self-efficacy and attitude
towards the imple-mentation of inclusive education. In terms of knowledge
development, the study provided the basis for regular teachers to utilize
mentoring in order to develop self-efficacy and positive attitude capable of
meeting the diverse needs of learners under inclusive class-room settings.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
There
had been growing agitations that persons with disabilities (PWDs) have
un-fettered right to education and such extending access to education for them
became a core issue in international discourses. The United Nations’ (UN)
Education for All (EFA) in-itiative is an essential element of the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) and by ex-tension the Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) as education is seen as being crucial to human development. This is more
worrisome as many children do not have access to education (United Nations
Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 2005). The SDGs
particularly is explicit on the need for inclusive education for PWDs (Linnéa
& Blixt, 2015). The explicitness is because across the world, there are
many rea-sons why children do not attend school, which include high levels of
mobility, social con-flict, and child labor. Others are exploitation, poverty,
gender and of course disability (UNESCO, 2005). This explains why the Federal
Ministry of Education (FME), (2015) asserts that bias, cultural archetypes and
negative behavior patterns about special needs education are endemic in
Nigeria.
Meanwhile,
inclusive education refers to a process of addressing and responding to the
diversity of needs of all children, youths and adults through increasing
participation in learning, cultures and communities, as well as reducing and
eliminating exclusion within and from education (UNESCO, 2009). According to
Andzayi (2012), inclusive education is a program for children with special
needs which stipulates that, all children and young people with or without
disabilities learn together in ordinary pre-school provision, schools, colleges and
universities with appropriate network of support. Inclusion therefore, implies
a radical reform of the school in terms of educational policy and curri-cular
frameworks, which includes educational content, assessment, pedagogy and the
sys-temic grouping of pupils within regular institutional and curricular
structures.
At
the core of inclusive education is the right to education which every child
has. This is as pronounced in the United Nations’ (UN) article 26(1) of
Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 (UN, 1948). At the Jomtien World
Conference on Education for All (1990), Heads of Government made a public
commitment to the Education for All (EFA) goals (UN, 2000). Since then, UNESCO
along with other UN agencies as well as a number of international and national
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been working towards achieving this
goal, adding to the efforts made at country level by their respective
governments (UNESCO, 2003). Similarly, the Salamanca Statement and Framework of
Action set and resolved to pursue inclusive education (UNESCO, 2005). The
principle of inclusion as was adopted at the Salamanca World Conference in 1994
was restated at the Dakar World Education Forum in 2000 that schools should
accommo-date all children regardless of their physical, intellectual, social,
emotional, linguistic or other special conditions (UNESCO, 2003a). This means
that children with or without dis-abilities should be accommodated in regular
schools. In Nigeria, the Federal Republic Nigeria (FRN) (2004) in her National
Policy on Education (NPE) made a clear policy on inclusive education for
persons with special learning needs emphasizing the need for their inclusion in
the regular school system. In addition to the NPE, Nigeria is signatory to
dif-ferent international declarations geared towards equalizing educational
opportunities for all such as the Jomtien Convention
of 1999 (Okeke-Oti, 2009). Furthermore, the UN is-sued the 2000 Dakar Framework
for Action, which expresses commitment towards Edu-cation For All (EFA)
disability notwithstanding (Tsafi & Neil, n.d).
In
compliance to these international commitments, Nigeria adopted and launched the
Universal Basic Education (UBE) scheme and enacted the UBE Act of 2004
(Nation-al Teachers’ Institute (NTI), 2011). The scheme provides the enabling
framework for the delivery of uninterrupted basic education within the context
of inclusion.
Basic
education is seen as the formal education deemed necessary for somebody to
function properly in society. Accordingly, FRN (2004) in its NPE defines basic
education as a type of education comprising 6 years of primary education and 3
years of junior sec-ondary school. The policy stipulates that the education
shall be free, compulsory, univer-sal and qualitative. The UBE scheme shall
include adult and non-formal educational pro-grams at primary and junior
secondary school levels for both adults and out-of school youths. The UBE is a
universal scheme implying that every child of school going age ir-respective of
tribe, culture or race and disability shall have access to basic education
un-der regular environment (Aluede in Labo-Popoola, Bello & Atanda, 2009). In other words, basic education refers to all
range of educational activities taking place in formal, non-formal or informal
settings that aim to meet basic needs of life. Under the UBE scheme, basic
education is a nine year program of education divided into three segments of
three years each as: Lower Basic (LB) Education covering Primary 1-3; Middle
Basic (MB) Education covering Primary 4-6 and Upper Basic (UB) Education
covering JSS 1-3 (Labo-Popoola, Bello & Atanda, 2009). The thrust of this
study is however at the UB education. The choice of UB was
because it is the terminal level of basic education from where students are
expected to proceed to post-basic level of education.
According
to FRN’s (2013) NPE, UB refers to the education which a child rece-ives
immediately after primary education. The NPE spells out some of its objectives
to include the following amongst others:
·
Provide
the child with diverse basic knowledge and skills for entrepreneurship and
educational advancement
·
Inculcate
values and raise morally upright individuals capable of independent thinking
and who appreciate the dignity of labor (Pg. 16)
The universal nature of UBE invariably made
Inclusive Education to become the norm rather than the exception for
the education of children with special needs at the ba-sic education level in
Nigeria (FRN, 2004). This is because the NPE specifically provides for equal
educational opportunities to all Nigerian children irrespective of
disabilities. The ideological justification for the emergence of inclusive
education is the need to re-spond to diversity of students in the light of
social justice, equity and democratic partici-pation and as part of a wider
interest in an inclusive society. It is therefore the respon-sibility of both
regular and special teachers to develop and implement the curriculum and make
instructional modifications necessary to accommodate the special needs of
individ-ual children (Sangeeta, 2009). This is why the implementation of
inclusive education programs requires changes in regular and special education
curriculum to develop dy-namic strategies to restructure the system to
accommodate students with diverse learning characteristics in regular school
settings......
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