ABSTRACT

The study investigated the instructional skill needs of teachers for effective inclusive classroom instructional delivery in public primary schools in South East States, Nigeria. The study sought answers to five (5) research questions and five null hypotheses, tested at 0.05 level of significance. A descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. The study was conducted in South East states. The target population of the study consists of 42,796 teachers in the 4,822 public primary schools in the South East states of Nigeria. Proportionate stratified simple random sampling technique was used for the study. Questionnaire was the instrument for data collection. The instrument was validated by three experts, all from College of Education, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike. 399 questionnaire with 55 items in each was administered to public primary school teachers (male and female) in the three selected states for their responses. Out of 399 questionnaire instruments administered, 384 were returned valid, that is 96% return of the instruments used for the sample. The reliability of the instrument was determined in a preliminary survey of the instrument using 20 teachers outside the sample frame work. Cronbach Alpha correlation coefficient was used to estimate the reliability. The result was 0.88 which was high. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while t-test statistics was used in testing the hypotheses. Based on the analysis, the following major findings were made: the instructional planning skills are needed by  teachers for effective inclusive classroom instructional delivery, the instructional communication skills are needed by teachers for effective inclusive classroom instructional delivery, the instructional management skills are needed by teachers for effective inclusive classroom instructional delivery, the instructional motivation skills are needed by teachers for effective inclusive classroom instructional delivery and the instructional assessment skills are needed by teachers for effective inclusive classroom instructional delivery. Based on the findings, there is a significant different in the mean responses of male and female teachers on instructional planning, communication and motivations kill needs for effective inclusive classroom instructional delivery. There is no significant different in the mean responses of Male and Female teachers on instructional management and assessment skill needs for effective inclusive classroom instructional delivery in South East, Nigeria. Finally some recommendations were made which include: Curriculum planners should design a programme of study that will accommodate all learners in the same learning environment, school management board should be willing to accept any learner irrespective of his or her mental or physical challenges and develop instructional skill that will benefit all learners in the inclusive classroom and areas for further research were highlighted.