Teaching Practice Experience of Science Student Teachers: Challenges and Possible Panacea in Nwafor Orizu College of Education, Nsugbe, Anambra State, Nigeria

The training of teachers is largely the responsibility of faculty of education in higher institutions. Teaching practice occupies a key position in teacher’s education program. It is an integral part of the teacher’s education program which is geared towards preparation of new entrants into the teaching profession. Teaching practice is a compulsory course which attracts compulsory course unit in science related education courses and other departments of the faculty of education. Student-teachers in the course of their teaching practice are exposed to a lot of experiences and challenges. The study was carried out to determine the teaching practice experience of science student teachers: challenges and possible panacea in Nwafor Orizu College of Education, Nsugbe, Anambra State. Three research questions guided the research with a 24- itemed questionnaire for data collection. The researcher adopted a descriptive survey research design. Five department were chosen for data collection with ten (10) final year students randomly selected from each of the department. The designed research questionnaires on four rating scale was administered to the respondents. Data collected were analyzed using mean score of 2.50. Mean score of 2.50 and above were accepted while those below 2.50 were rejected. From the result obtained, it was found that teaching practice exposes science student teachers to a lot of experiences which includes but not limited to mastery of the subject matter, improvement of classroom management skills, application of different teaching methods during lesson delivery, effective writing of lesson plans and notes, fosters student’s creativity and exposition to record keeping and administrative tasks. Furthermore, science student teachers encounter numerous challenges during teaching practice which includes poorly equipped laboratories, non-co-operative attitude of permanent teachers, non-availability of office for student teachers and host of others as depicted in the findings. It was recommended among others that student teachers should be enlightened by the institution on the importance of teaching practice and likely challenges to encounter while on the assignment.