TEACHERS’ PEDAGOGICAL KNOWLEDGE AND YEARS OF TEACHING EXPERIENCE AS PREDICTORS OF CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT SKILLS IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION IN NSUKKA LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, ENUGU STATE

Abstract

This study explored teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and years of teaching experiences as predictors of classroom management skills in Early Childhood Care and Education in Nsukka Local Government Area, Enugu State, Nigeria. Two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted correlation research design.  The population of the study consisted of 258 ECCE teachers in Nsukka Local Government Area, Enugu State, Nigeria. There was no sampling for the study because the entire population is in few hundreds and manageable.  Two researcher-made instrument titled Teachers’ Pedagogical Knowledge Questionnaire (TPKQ) and Teachers Classroom Management Skills Questionnaire (TCMSQ) were used for data collection. Three experts validated the instruments; one from Department of Science Education (Measurement and Evaluation Unit) and two from Department of Early Childhood and Primary Education, Faculty of Education, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Internal consistency of 0.87 and 0.86 were obtained for TPKQ and TCMSQ through Cronbach Alpha. Linear regression ANOVA was used to answer the research questions while t-test associated with linear regression was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 probability level.  It was found that teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and years of teaching experiences has significant predictive power on ECCE teachers’ classroom management skills in Nsukka, L.G.A.