ABSTRACT

The study investigated teachers’ professional competencies and task performance as correlates of effective instructional delivery in secondary schools in South-East, Nigeria. The study adopted a correlational survey research design. Eight research questions and eight hypotheses respectively were raised for the study. The population comprised 26,774 principals and teachers in 1,293 public secondary schools. A sample of 1,338 principals and teachers from 64 public secondary schools in three out of five states in the South-East Nigeria were drawn for the study using multistage sampling procedure representing 5% of the population. Two Researcher - developed instruments were used for data collection. They included a 48-item questionnaire titled Teachers’ Professional Competencies and Task Performance Questionnaire (TPCTPQ)” and a ten-item rating scale titled Teachers’ Effective Instructional Rating Scale (TEIRS) which were validated by three experts. Reliability was established using Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation which yielded reliability coefficient of 0.83 for TPCTPQ and 0.92 for TEIRS. Also the internal consistencies was determined using Cronbach Alpha which yielded 0.82. Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used to answer the research questions while linear regression was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.5 level of significance. The results showed that the different variables of teachers’ professional competencies and task performance relate to high extent with effective instructional delivery. Findings revealed that teachers’ practical skills, teachers knowledge creation process, teachers pedagogical content knowledge, teachers’ knowledge transfer, teachers  lesson planning, teachers continuous assessment, teachers record keeping and teachers’ delivery of lesson relate with effective instructional delivery in secondary school and have significant relationship with effective  instructional delivery. Based on these findings, it was recommended among others that teachers should endeavour to make their instructions more practical than theory for effective instructional delivery. Principals should ensure adequate supervision of teachers’ lesson planning as well as the implementation to ensure that the lesson plans are religiously followed. Government agencies like Ministry of Education should organise regular workshops for teachers on ways to improve their practical skills and knowledge transfer during instructions so as to enhance instructional delivery on students’ academic performances and authors of books should endeavour to write textbooks in Education to serve as teachers’ lesson planning and implementation of continuous assessment that will make information available for teachers who are deficient in those areas.