Professionalism, School Facilities, and Students’ Cognitive Performance in Science in Oyo State, Nigeria

Science plays a fundamental role in the contemporary society with the potential to improve lives gaining impetus to research works. The influence of professionalism and school facilities on students’ cognitive performance in science subjects in secondary schools in Oyo State was investigated. This was a descriptive survey research which was questionnaire based. The population of the study was all the public secondary schools (science teachers and students) in Oyo State, Nigeria. Purposive, cluster and simple random sampling techniques were used to select twenty public schools from each of the six educational zones in Oyo State making a total of one hundred and twenty schools, all science teachers (male and female) making a total of three hundred and sixty but three hundred and forty-two questionnaires were retrieved (95% of the sampled), and a total of eight thousand, two hundred and eighty science students from the selected schools were considered in the study. In each of the schools selected for the study, only science teachers were involved in the sample and the students that registered and wrote Biology, Chemistry and Physics WAEC examination of May/June 2018 in Oyo State, Nigeria. The data collected for the study were analyzed using descriptive statistics like percentage and mean, Multiple Regression analysis (ANOVA) and t-test. All the hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study revealed that there was significant combined influence (F1,340 = 16.786; p<0.05) of teachers’ professionalism (professional disposition, professional discipline, professional development and professional experience) and school facilities (well-equipped laboratories, library, classrooms and conveniences) on science students’ academic performance in Oyo State. It is recommended that professionalism should be reflected in the teaching of science subjects in secondary schools, training and re-training should be encouraged, and that the school environment should be made conducive for teaching-learning activities.