Survey of the Perception of Basic Science Teachers in Benue State of Nigeria on the New Curriculum of Basic Science and Technology for Junior Secondary Schools

The major thrust of this paper was the survey of the perception of Basic Science teachers in Benue State on the new curriculum of Basic Science and Technology for Junior Secondary Schools. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The population for the study was all the Basic Science teachers in all Junior Secondary Schools in Makurdi Municipal of Benue State. Three research questions and three null hypotheses guided the study. The sample was 114 Basic Science teachers. Stratified random sampling technique was adopted to select 114 basic teachers spread over the public and private junior secondary schools. Questionnaire on Teachers’ Perception on Curriculum Implementation (TPCI) containing 24 items which was developed by the researchers was used for data collection. The instrument was face validated by three experts in Science Education. The reliability of the instrument was determined using Cronbach Alpha; this yields an internal consistency coefficient of 0.83. Copies of the instruments were retrieved and analyzed using mean, standard deviation and analysis of variance (ANOVA). It was observed that the level of awareness of introduction of basic science and technology as a single subject was very low. The teachers are of the opinion that they are not provided with the curriculum, the time-table have not reflected basic science and technology as a single subject and have not used the new curriculum to teach in the junior secondary schools. It was also discovered that the teachers are not totally clear about the fundamentals of the new basic science and technology curriculum. It recommended among others that strong monitoring team be put in place to ensure that the Basic Science and Technology (BST) Curriculum is made available by principals for teachers’ use and the school time-table be adjusted to reflect Basic Science and Technology (BST) as a single school subject.