Teacher professional collaboration and the teachers’ efficacy in government secondary schools in Yaounde

Abstract

The research work titled „Teacher Professional Collaboration and the Teachers‟ Efficacy in Government Secondary Schools in Yaounde‟‟ is aimed at investigating how teachers interacting in a collegial atmosphere and learning from each other in a school milieu can influence their level of efficacy in accomplishing classroom task or the teaching learning transaction. Classroom processes have been todirected toward class control and discipline, pedagogic application, evaluation, students‟ engagement, time management, etc. The research is conducted based on the fact that school failure had always been a reoccurring factor and even though students and parents carries the highest responsibility, teachers and their inability to implement curriculum can also be a factor. Besides, for a teacher to stay in teaching, he/she must continue learning and improvin g on her pedagogy. A survey which was exploratory was used in the study. A structured questionnaire was designed using the five point Likert scale with questionnaire items being agree, strongly agree, disagree, strongly disagree and neutral. The qualitative data was analyzed through descriptive techniques while the chi square analysis was performed to test for differences between two or more groups in proportion to categorical variables. A Pearson Value less than 0.05 were considered as a cut off value for statistical significance with the hypotheses as follows: Ha: There is a significant relationship between teachers‟ motivation and the teachers‟ efficacy (Pearson correlation value= 15.5 >0.05) Ha: There is a significant relationship between available resources for collaboration and the teachers‟ efficacy (Pearson correlation value=33.5 > 0.05) Ha: There is a significant relationship between teacher leadership and the teachers‟ efficacy (Pearson correlation value =23 > 0.05) Ha: There is a significant relationship between government policies towards professionalism and the teachers‟ efficacy in Government Secondary schools (Pearson correlation value =24.5 > 0.05). All the null hypotheses were rejected in favor of the alternative hypotheses therefore indicating that teacher professional collaboration in schools can increase teachers‟ efficacy in class thereby improving on students‟ performances. However, the existence of real professional learning communities in our secondary schools to improve teachers learning and implementation is still a fallacy. Many teachers don‟t see professional collaborative learning as necessary in their professional life and so continue to work in isolation. Teachers should therefore be motivated and the government should work closely with school Principals to foster professional collaborative learning for the improvement of teaching and learning. This can be by providing resources for school based seminars, workshops and conferences; supervised by delegated pedagogic inspectors rather than allowing it only in the hands of divisional and Regional inspectors which is done occasionally without any follow up.