ABSTRACT

This study focused on the assessment of Implementation of Teachers’ Registration Council of Nigeria mandates on professionalization of teaching in South East, Nigeria. Seven research questions and seven hypotheses were raised to guide the study. The design of the study was descriptive survey research design; the area of the study was South East, Nigeria. The accessible population of the study was made up of 5,498 public secondary school teachers and 28 staff of the TRCN in Abia, Enugu and Imo States in South East Nigeria. Multi stage sampling technique was used to arrive at a sample size of 1640 teachers and 28 TRCN staff which represented 30% of teachers population and 100% of TRCN staff population. The instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire titled Assessment of Implementation of Teachers’ Registration Council of Nigeria Mandates on Professionalization of Teaching Questionnaire (AITRCNMPTQ). The instrument was validated by two experts from Educational Management and one expert from Measurement and Evaluation all from Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike. For stability of the instrument Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used to establish the reliability of the instrument and it had a correlation coefficient of 0.73 and Cronbach Alpha coefficient was used to measure the internal consistency of the items which yielded a reliability index value of 0.81.The method of data analysis was the use of mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions and t- test statistic was used to test the null hypotheses 1-6 while Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to test the 7^th hypothesis. The findings of the  study revealed that TRCN mandate on registration is implemented to a great extent, licensing  mandate is  implemented to a  low  extent, mandatory continuing  professional development (MCPD) is  implemented to a  low  extent. Finally, the study revealed that there is a low extent of implementation of TRCN policy mandate on professionalization of teaching amongst states in South East. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that TRCN should adhere to using the requisite criteria like mandatory qualifying examination, interview and so on before registration of teachers for improving the quality and commitment of teachers to the teaching profession. It was equally recommended that licensing of teachers should be carried out by TRCN on regular basis for prove of quality and professionalization standard of teachers in the teaching profession. In addition, there should be periodic training and conference exercises for teachers on best practices and need for mandatory continuous self professional development in order to compete favourably with other teachers from developed nations of the world, hence scholars all over are of the opinion that no nation can rise above the quality of her teachers, which South East is not an exception.