The main purpose of this study was to identify, describe, and explain the
school effectiveness characteristics that might influence English language
certification in selected secondary schools in a Third World country, Nigeria.
Ethnographic methods of participant observation, interviews, questionnaires,
camera and video recordings, and documentary analysis were used to study six
secondary schools in urban, sub-urban, and rural settings. The study was
conducted in response to the call for the contextualization of School
Effectiveness Research (SER).
One incontrovertible conclusion in School Effectiveness Research (SER)
is that the accumulation of evidence on the characteristics of school
effectiveness has not answered the perplexing question of why certain
characteristics work in one school and not in others. Many researchers have
suggested contextualizing SER as one way of dealing with this nagging problem.
The contextualization of SER, argued these researchers, would ensure that local
school and classroom cultures were taken into consideration in the design,
implementation, and interpretation of School Effectiveness Research. Studying
the nuances of local school cultures might illuminate the relationships between
school effectiveness characteristics and the classroom instructional strategies
employed by effective teachers to enhance student academic achievement.
Results from the six case studies indicated support for many school
effectiveness characteristics that have been attested to in the literature, such as
strong and purposeful school leadership, clear and articulated goals, high expectations of student achievement, a safe and orderly environment conducive
to learning, and frequent evaluation of students' progress. But some
characteristics that might be peculiar to the Third World were also unraveled by
the study. For instance, extramural lessons seemed to be an important feature in
certain schools that achieved effective examination results but lacked
effectiveness characteristics.
There appears also to be a link between the identified school level
effectiveness characteristics and the classroom level instructional strategies
employed by effective teachers in English language classrooms. The study of the
dimensions of effective instruction in Nigerian English language classrooms
yielded some "language examination-oriented instructional strategies" that were
different from the "mediational instructional strategies" used by effective
language teachers in Californian classrooms in the United States of America. It
was felt that these differences were a result of contextual differences in the two
developed and developing world domains.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/8684 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Adewuyi, David Aderemi |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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