Abstract
This study examined the challenges facing Economics Teacher Trainees in Nigeria. The study adopted a descriptive survey design, guided by four research questions and one hypothesis. The area of study was the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu State. All the thirty-one, 400 level Economics/Education students in the 2015/2016 session and ten lecturers in the Department of Social Science Education, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, (41 respondents) made up the population of the study. Thirty-one Economics/Education students in 400 levels and the ten lecturers were used for the study. Forty-four item structured questionnaire was employed to collect data. The questionnaire was confirmed by two lecturers in Social Science Education Department and one lecturer from Measurement and Evaluation Unit of Science Education Department, both of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Test for internal consistency of the instrument yielded a Cronbach- Alpha coefficient of 0.83. Mean and Standard Deviation was applied to answer the research questions, while t- test was used to test the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. The findings among other things showed that the Economics teacher trainees unanimously accepted that there are many issues and challenges facing them such as course contents/subject matter of their programme, financial challenges as well as welfare challenges and so on. Moreover, there was a significant difference in the mean rating of the response scores of the Economics Teacher Trainees and their Lecturers on the extent of validity of the curriculum of Economics teacher trainees and that of post basic schools. The findings were discussed and it was recommended inter-alia that innovative teaching techniques should be taught to the trainees and should form the basic teaching technique to be used by the trainees during their teaching practice and actual teaching career in life among others.
Ejimonye, J. C. & Ejimonye, R. L. (2018)