Early Childhood Care Teachers Classroom Assessment Skills and Approaches in Mathematics in Owerri Educational Zone of Imo State, Nigeria
Keywords:
Assessment Skills And Assessment Approaches, Early childhood TeachersAbstract
This study examines classroom assessment skills and approaches of early childhood education teachers in mathematics in Owerri Educational Zone of Imo State, Nigeria. Two research hypotheses are formulated and tested for significant difference between the mean score of the variables. The population of the study consisted of all early childhood care teachers in public schools in Owerri Educational zone Imo State with population size of 1,037 teachers A sample of 213 early childhood education teachers is selected using stratified random sampling technique. The instrument for data collection is Assessment Skills Inventory (ASI) developed by the researchers and is validated by two experts in mathematics education and one expert in measurement and evaluation. The instrument has reliability coefficient of 0.91and 0.86 determined using Cronbach alpha reliability method. The data are analyzed using mean and standard deviation while t-test is used to test the two hypotheses formulated for the study at 0.05 level of significance. The results show that classroom assessment approaches used by early childhood education teachers are mostly class exercise, homework, test and quizzes as well as normal assessment test notes grading and communicating results. Also, the results show that female teachers are more skillful in written test items and communicating assessment results than their males counterpart. Consequently, it recommends that workshops and seminars should be organized for early childhood care education teachers on the use of assessment approaches.
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