ABSTRACT

The study was on the “perceived influence of teachers classroom management skills on the academic performance of students in public secondary schools in South East in Nigeria”. Descriptive research design was used for the study. The purpose of the study considered the extent to which perceived influence of teachers’ classroom Management skills influence academic performance of students in public secondary schools in south east Nigeria. In carrying out this research, relevant literature was reviewed. Ten research questions and seven hypotheses were developed to guide the study. The population of the study was 26,600 respondents consisting of 10,480 male and 16,180 female teachers from 1,316 public secondary schools in the five states of South-East. A sample of 1330 respondents comprising of 526 male and 794 female teachers was randomly drawn through the use of multistage sampling involving simple random and proportionate stratified simple random techniques. A 4 point scale questionnaire was used to elicit information from the respondents. The face and content validation of the instrument was carried out by three experts in the college of education Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike. The instrument for data collection was a 50-item structured questionnaire titled ‘’Perceived Influence of Teachers’ classroom management skills on Academic Performance of Students” (PITCMSAPS). To ensure the reliability of the instrument, test retest method was conducted using 50 teachers, 20 males and 30 females from 10 rural and urban public secondary schools in Uyo education zone of Akwa Ibom State, which were not part of the study but have the characteristics of administration. A total number of 1330 copies of questionnaire was distributed and administered, out of which 1307 were used for data analysis. The data collected was analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions, t-test statistic was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significant. Findings of the study among others revealed that teachers’ classroom management skills influenced to a greater extent academic performance of students in public secondary schools rural and urban in South East Nigeria; such skills include: teacher’s authority skill, teacher’s classroom arrangement, teachers’, knowledge of subject matter, teachers’ patience skill, teacher’s class discipline, communication skill,   teachers’ ICT skills and others. Based on the findings above, the study recommended that; teachers should regularly attend capacity building workshops, seminars, and conferences update and to acquire more knowledge on the system, that teachers should always make sure that classrooms are well arranged, supplied instructional materials carefully taken care of in order to sustain the students’ interest in learning and principals, administrators, directors, parents should assist the teachers to instill discipline to students regularly and every student should be treated equally to enhance their interest to study and perform better.