TWO COLLABORATIVE TRAINING METHODS AND PRE-PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS’ ATTITUDE TO AND PRACTICE OF CHILD RIGHTS IN ONDO STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Child Rights are crucial to the general well-being of children because they help guarantee their adequate protection and development. Reports have shown that attitude to and practice of child rights are poor among pre-primary school teachers in Ondo State, Nigeria. Previous works on child rights focused more on survey of factors influencing than on interventions. This study, therefore, was carried out to determine the effects of two Collaborative Training Methods (CTMs) - Think-Pair-Share (TPS) and Small Group Discussion (SGD) - on pre-primary school teachers‟ attitude to and practice of child rights in Ondo State. The moderating effects of gender and child rights awareness were also examined. The Kolb Experiential and Vygotsky‟s Socio-cultural theories provided the framework, while the study adopted the mixed methods (pretest-posttest control group quasiexperimental design, with a 3x2x2 factorial matrix and phenomenological approach). One (Ondo Central) out of the three Senatorial Districts was randomly selected. Three (Akure South, Ondo West and Idanre) out of the six Local Government Areas (LGAs) were randomly selected. Ten public primary schools, with pre-primary section, were purposively selected from each of the LGAs. Sixty pre-primary school teachers (20 per LGA) with more than five years teaching experience, were purposively selected. The schools were randomly assigned to TPS (20), SGD (20) and control (20) groups. The instruments used were Attitude to Child Rights (r = 0.82), Child Rights Awareness Questionnaires (r = 0.73), Child Rights Practice Observation Scale (r = 0.71), training guides, field notes and audio-visual materials. Training lasted nine weeks. A session of focus group discussions was held with 10 pre-primary school teachers. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Analysis of covariance and Sidak post-hoc test at 0.05 level of significance, while the qualitative data were analysed thematically. Majority (83.3%) of the participants were female and 77.0% had high level of child rights awareness.There was a significant main effect of treatment on pre-primary school teachers‟ attitude (F(2;47) = 11.52, partial ῆ2 = 0.33). The participants in TPS had the highest post-attitude mean score (68.74), followed by those in SGD (64.16) and the control (48.74) groups. There was a significant main effect of treatment on practice of the teachers (F(2;47) = 28.14, partial ῆ2 = 0.55). The pre-primary school teachers in SGD had the highest post-practice mean score (43.63), followed by those in TPS (42.25) and the control (28.07) groups. There were no significant main effects of gender and child rights awareness on pre-primary school teachers‟ attitude and practice of child rights. The twoway and three-way interactions effects of treatment, gender and child rights awareness were not significant. Teachers were neither aware of nor practised child right acts. Think-pair-share and small group discussion enhanced pre-primary school teachers‟ attitude to and practice of child rights in Ondo State, Nigeria, regardless of gender and child rights awareness. These methods should be adopted in training pre-primary school teachers on child rights.