ABSTRACT

This study appraised supervision of instruction in secondary schools in North- Central, Nigeria. The study investigated the extent: qualifications of supervisors of instruction; frequency of supervisory visits to secondary schools; supervisors’ adoption of approved supervision techniques in carrying out their assignment; and supervisors’ observation of teachers in the classroom are in line with Supervisors’ guidelines. The descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. Four research questions and three null hypotheses, tested at 0.05 level of significance guided the study. The study population comprised 11,285 respondents, made up of 678 supervisors, 1,228 principals and 9,379 teachers. Adopting stratified random sampling technique, 40 percent of the supervisors, principals and teachers from Benue, Nasarawa and Plateau States were selected to give a total sample of 2,297 respondents (148 supervisors, 252 principals and 1,897 teachers). A structured questionnaire with two sections: I and II was used for data collection. Section I addressed the bio-data of the respondents while section II had four clusters with each cluster addressing each research question. The instrument was face validated by five experts, three from educational administration and planning and two from measurement and evaluation, all from University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The instrument was trial-tested on 120 respondents who are not part of the study population. The reliability coefficients of the instrument were determined using Cronbach Alpha method. The results were 0.91, 0.85 and 0.79 for crlusters B, C, and D respectively with overall index of 0.87. Frequency count and percentage were used to answer research question 1, while mean and standard deviation were used to answer research questions 2, 3 and 4. The three null hypotheses were tested using analysis of variance and supported using Scheffe’s test. The major findings include: Qualifications of supervisors of instruction are to a very great extent (90.54%) in line with Supervisors’ guidelines; frequency of supervisory visits to secondary schools is to a great extent (2.98 ± 0.68) in line with Supervisors’ guidelines; supervisors to a great extent (2.90 ± 0.65) adopt supervision techniques in carrying out their assignments in line with Supervisors’ guidelines; and supervisors to a less extent (2.15 ± 0.71) observe teachers in the classroom during supervision in line with Supervisors’ guidelines. From the findings, four recommendations are put forth, one of which is that Government should sponsor workshops, seminars, symposia and various in-service training programmes for the supervisors to update their knowledge and skills.