Gender and Occupational Tenure as Correlates of In-Service English Language Teachers’ Interest in their Professional Development in Selected Nigerian Schools
Keywords:
In-service, gender, professional development, occupational tenure, English language teachers.Abstract
No educational system can rise above the quality of its teaching force. Teachers
lacking in enthusiasm for professional development cannot be expected to
perform their duties satisfactorily in the face of the myriad of challenges of
and rapid changes in the characteristics of the 21st Century students. Among
the factors found in literature to influence language teachers’ interest in their
professions are gender and occupational tenure. This study therefore
investigated the relationship between each of the two selected variables
(gender and occupational tenure) and the interest of the English Language
teachers in Ibadan metropolis in pursuing professional development. A multistage sampling procedure was employed to get a total of one hundred and
thirty-three teachers served with copies of a fifteen-item questionnaire titled
Teachers’ Perception of Teaching adapted from Faniran and Olatunji
2011. Frequency Counts, percentages and chi-square statistical tools were
employed to analyse the data collected in testing the two null hypotheses
formulated. Findings from this study have shown that though more of the male
English Language teachers than their female counterparts have higher degrees,
the former are less enthusiastic about professional development. Also, most of
the teachers lose more interest in their jobs as they grew older in the profession
