Impact of Mentoring Regular Teachers’ Attitude on the Implementation of Inclusive Education at Basic Education in Lafia Metropolis, Nasarawa State, Nigeria.

Abstract

This study examined the impact of mentoring regular teachers’ attitude on the implementation of inclusive education at basic education in Lafia metropolis, Nasarawa State, Nigeria. The study was premised on 2 research questions and 2 hypotheses The design of the study was quasi-experimental while the population of the study was 539 regular teachers at Basic Education level in Lafia metropolis. The sample size of the population was 42 (26 male and 16 female) regular teachers drawn from 2 schools using purposive sample technique. A 28-item instrument used for data collection was Teachers’ Attitude Scale (TAS) developed by the researchers. TAS was validated 3 lecturers who were not below Senior Lecturer from Federal University Lafia, Nigeria. A pilot study was conducted at Akwangwa, a neighbouring district to the study area. The responses of the respondents were subjected to reliability analysis using Cronbach Alpha. Meanwhile, TAS was polytomously scored and reliability estimate of 0.86 was obtained. TAS was administered to the regular teachers in both the experimental and control groups at both pre-test and post-test stages by the researchers. Research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation while analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used in testing the formulated null hypotheses at 0.05 alpha level of significance. The findings of the study revealed that mentorship significantly improved regular teachers’ attitude in the implementation of inclusive education and gender was not found to be a significant factor on regular teachers’ attitude in the implementation of inclusive education at basic education in Lafia metropolis, Nasarawa State, Nigeria. Keywords: Mentoring, gender, inclusive education, attitude, regular teachers DOI: 10.7176/JEP/13-24-10 Publication date:August 31st 2022