STRESS AND TEACHERS’ EFFECTIVENESS IN PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN NIGERIA: A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The paper philosophically examined stress and teachers’ effectiveness in public secondary schools in Nigeria. Teachers’ effectiveness describes the skill, knowledge and competence with which a teacher executes the duties and responsibilities related to his job description. This can be verified using parameters such as their subject matter delivery, examination conduct as well as supervision of class assignment, teaching practice and projects. Such effectiveness however can be affected as a result of stress which comes in different forms. No matter how good a teacher is, if he does not avoid stress, he will certainly have problems at the end of the day. Consequently, the study has been treated under appropriate subheadings such as location and teachers’ effectiveness, gender and teachers’ effectiveness in public, socio - economic background and teachers’ effectiveness as well as level of education and teachers’ effectiveness. The human capital theory was used as anchor for the study. It was concluded that government and school administrators need to plan teachers’ workload properly, in view of their welfare and performance, in order to get the best from them, which goes a long way in promoting education in the society for sustainable national development. Among the recommendations were that teachers should be assigned to responsibilities based on their qualification and experience, they should be properly remunerated in commensuration to their qualifications, instructional materials should be qualitative and available at all times, there is the need to have more teaching personnel in secondary schools since the available  ones are currently inadequate and a periodic teacher performance evaluation is necessary in order to block or eliminate loopholes.