Reliability and Validity of Teaching Practice Assessment Instrument’s ability to Predict NCE teachers’ Teaching Effectiveness in Kaduna State, Nigeria

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the reliability and validity of teaching practice assessment instrument used by the Federal College of Education, Zaria in assessing her NCE teacher trainees (pre-service teachers) and to employ the same instrument in predicting her trainees’ effectiveness as serving professional teachers after graduation. Methodological and cross-sectional research designs involving 572 teachers (512 NCE primary school teachers and 60 secondary school teachers) were used for the study. Three instruments were used for the study, viz, Teaching Practice Assessment Template (TPAT 1 and 2) and photocopies of serving NCE teachers’ certificates (PSTC). Three research questions were stated and answered and two hypotheses were tested. The reliability analysis of the instrument for the data collected was carried out using Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency coefficients, test-retest external reliability coefficients and correlated item-total correlation coefficients. The validity analysis of data was performed using exploratory factor analysis with varimax rotation method while the relationship of the pre-service NCE teachers’ performance to their performance as professional/serving teachers was established by Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation coefficient. The effectiveness of the serving teachers was predicted by t-test for correlated samples. The results revealed that the teaching practice assessment instrument of the College is reliable: the internal consistency reliability of the whole instrument is 0.993 while its seven segments’ reliability values range from 0.869-0.984, all by Conbach’s alpha reliability estimates; by test-retest approach, 64% (16) out of the 25 items of the instrument displayed external reliability ranging from 0.373-0.692 (p˂0.05); corrected item-total correlations showed reliability values of the items to be between 0.855-0.966 (p˂0.05). The validity of the instrument was also established as 24 out of its 25 items by exploratory factor analysis accounted for 92.2% of the total variance. Although the trainee teachers’ assessment scores showed no significant correlation with their scores as professional and serving teachers (r = -0.083, p˂0.05), there was a statistically significant difference in the mean performance of the two groups – the difference being in favour of the serving/professional NCE teachers. This means the NCE products of the College are effectively doing well as professional teachers. In the light of the findings of this study, it is recommended that the use of the teaching practice assessment instrument of the College should be continued with little modifications as presented in the research so as to direct teaching practice supervisors and cooperating schools head teachers properly on what to look for in scoring the trainee teachers. Also, the wrong conception that the NCE products of the College are not doing well in their callings should be discarded.