TEACHERS’ DEMOGRAPHIC VARIABLES AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT OF PRE-PRIMARY PUPILS IN OGBA/EGBEMA/NDONI LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF RIVERS STATE.

Abstract

This study investigated teacher demographic variable and cognitive development of pre-primary pupils in Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni Local Government Area, Rivers State. Specifically, the study examined how teacher educational level and age influences pupils’ cognitive development. Two hypotheses guided the study. Descriptive survey design was adopted for this study. The population of the consisted of 1,121 teachers. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 10 teachers from 10 private nursery schools, making the sampling size 100 respondent of the study. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Face and content validation was used to validate the questionnaire for instrumentation while Cronbach’s Alpha statistics was used to test the internal consistency of the instrument which yielded the coefficient index of 0.15. This indicated that the instrument was reliable and suitable for the study. The result of the analysis revealed that teachers’ educational level and age influence pupils’ cognitive development. Recommendations were made which included that government should improve teacher’s salary to encourage teachers in advancing their education and employ professional teachers especially for the pre-primary level of education.