Student-Teachers’ Challenges During Teaching Practice In Secondary Schools And Their Solutions

INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Education is a process that starts the very moment a person is born and ends whenever the person finally dies. The process of education therefore involves different activities on the part of the parents, teachers, the community, the government and the child (Okeke 2004). (Fufunwa 2004) defined education as an aggregate of all the processes by means of which a person develops abilities, attitudes and other forms of behavior of positive value in the society in which he lives. According to (Ocho 1988). The central purpose of education is virtue or character training. Ocho further stated that the “other purpose of education includes the acquisition of knowledge, understanding and physical skills”. The individual require this competence in order to enable him live fully and contribute to the development of his society. The ability of a nation to grow and develop depends on the quality and emphasis in its educational system and not on the amount of natural wealth such as minerals, arable land, forestry and sea products available in the society (Ocho 2005). In all these the teacher stands centrally in actualization of these objectives. The nation recognizes the importance of teacher education when they continued to give a major emphasis in all out education planning. This is basically because no educational system can rise above the quality of its teachers, that is to say that the quality of the teachers in any country determines the quality of her education and the level of national development.
The national policy on education of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1998) outlined the purpose of teacher education as follows;
a. To produce highly motivated, conscientious effective classroom teacher for all learning in our educational system.
b. To provide teachers with intellectual professional background adequate for assignment and to make them adaptable to any changing situation not only in the life of their country but to the wider world.
c. To encourage further the spirit of acquiring and creativity in teachers.
d. To enhance teachers commitment to the teaching profession.
e. To help teachers to fit into the society of the community and the society at large and to enhance their commitment to national objectives.
Teaching practice is a very important aspect of any teacher training programme. It is a student-teacher and prospective regular teacher what housemanship is to young medical doctor. Questions may be asked, why do young medical doctor go for housemanship under the more experienced ones? Why do vocational education students go on industrial training? Likewise, why do student-teachers or prospective teachers go on teaching practice? These questions and their answers are very similar. No human being anywhere would have to face some dangers that could be avoided. There is a popular adage which says that “prevention is always better than cure” or “a stitch in time saves nine”. Most of the student-teachers do not seem to be fully aware of this fact, may be because of the small proportion of the entire time allocated to teaching practice. He needs to go through adequate and appropriate teaching practice experience.
(Akilaiya 2001) defined teaching practice as an integral part of teacher education programme which provide opportunity for student-teachers to put all theoretical knowledge into practice in real school situation. It is a compulsory practical exercise for every student-teacher. Thus, it is the first opportunity for a student-teacher to participate in activities involved in teaching in actual situations. It affords the prospective teacher the opportunity to test, prove the lecture-room theoretical assertions and at the same time provide a forum for him to try out teaching and see whether he can really be a good teacher. So it is very essential that student-teachers should take teaching practice very seriously.
The objectives of teaching practice for assessing student-teachers are as follow:
a. To provide opportunities for the student to acquire and improve in teaching skills.
b. To make the student-teacher develop high degree of self confidence and acquire high self esteem and self concept.
c. To enable the student-teacher to acquire the characteristics of a teacher and to display appropriate behavior.
d. To enable the student-teachers effectively plan and prepare lessons.
e. To help the student-teachers to be initiated into teaching realm.
f. To enable the student-teacher develop traits, attitudes and abilities, and
g. To enable the student-teacher to bring about learning in children.
According to (Iloh 2001), the key actors in teaching practice are; the student-teachers, the resident supervisors, the college supervisors and the principals/heads of departments of the co-operating schools.
The student teacher is the prospective teacher that is still under training, who is acquiring skills, knowledge and techniques required for teaching profession. At this point, the person puts all he had learnt into practice.|
The resident supervisor means the co-operating teacher in the co-operating schools. He is the teacher, the student-teacher meets at school where he is doing his teaching practice. He may be the class teacher of the class the students-teacher is using for practice. He sees whether the student-teacher is punctual and regular in his class. He also assists him with his lesson note so as to have an effective lesson note. The person equally assists the student-teacher in the area that he find difficult to teach. He sees the student-teachers mode of dressing, whether it is decent or indecent.
College supervisor is the student-teacher’s lecturer. He comes to find out whether the student-teacher has really understood what he has been taught as regards to the teaching techniques and methodology. And finally bring back the student-teacher’s performance to the school.
The principals/head of department of the co-operating schools is the person in-charge of the co-operating schools where the student-teacher is doing his teaching practice. He helps in the selection of co-operating teachers who can work with the student ¬¬– teachers. He builds rapport among resident teachers and student-teachers to enhance their professional growth.
Micro-teaching is one of the most important developments in the field of teaching practice. It is originated in Stanford university in 1963. it is very important because there is virtually no provision for trial and error in teaching practice by student-teachers that schools are not established for experiments by teachers who are learning how to teach. These interns are supposed to have done experiments by students-teachers on teaching during micro-teaching sessions in their colleges of education. Experiences gathered in micro-teaching sessions will help reduce the number of mistake they make during actual teaching practice. So micro-teaching helps the student-teachers to have an early encounter with teaching and in this way attempts to put into practice some of the theories learnt in the lectures.
The importance of teaching practice is that it is a crucial period for the teacher to put into practice all the theoretical/practical concepts learnt at school. The teaching practice is intended to expose student-teachers to all aspects of the school environment and actual classroom teaching and learning. It is at this stage that student-teachers become acquainted with the school curriculum and its implementation and tradition. It is a stage that makes the student-teacher come into real terms, and professional requirements and conduct. As it exposes them on school life and future teachers and enables them interact with the school administration, staff, student, and even their parents and other relations.
The teaching practice experience exposes the student-teacher in the field of teaching and enhances him to be effective in the classroom. It is difficult to recognize good teaching unless one has passed through the process. In order to translate theory into practice, the student-teacher will encounter a lot of challenges, but since teaching practice is important in the teaching preparation programme, there is a need for adequate planning and implementation. This study is mainly focused on finding out those challenges encountered by the practicing student-teachers and possible solutions to those challenges.

Statement of the Problems
The importance of the teacher in relation to the quality of education a country provides to its citizenry, explains in part why special training and practical experience are involved in any well programmed teacher education scheme. There are numbers of problem that militate against the effective implementation of the teaching practice programme in general. The specialized nature of the programme further complicates problems in this area. (Ogbonna 2006) observed that student teachers faces challenges during teaching practice such as location of teaching practice school, indiscipline and rude behaviours of pupils towards student-teachers, challenges of individual differences among students/pupils, difficulty of student-teacher in adapting to pupils level of academic. This study would therefore investigate fully the challenges and also find the possible solutions to them.

Purpose of the study
This study aims at investigating the challenges encountered by student-teachers during teaching practice and their possible solutions. This study is specifically meant to:
i. Determine the exact role of the student-teachers.
ii. Find out the challenges encountered by student-teachers during teaching practice.
iii. Identify useful solutions to the challenges outlined in (ii) above.

Significance of the study
The significance of the study will be of great benefit to the following:
i. Teacher
ii. Curriculum planners
ii. School authority
iv. Government
v. Parent
vi. Researcher.
Practicing teachers will find this research work beneficial in the sense that it will help them to understand a device need of averting challenges that surround teaching career. It can also assist aspiring teachers to develop interest in teaching career, having identified those challenges student-teacher encountered during teaching practice and fortified themselves in order to face the challenges.
This work will also help curriculum planners to direct their planning towards addressing the challenges of student-teachers during teaching practice which will in turn improve the planning process and educational activities.
This work will help the school authority to know the areas they are not covering effectively, and then address the situation.
Government will find this work beneficial as they will be able to know some of the challenges which student-teachers encountered thereby contribute in an attempt to find a way out.
Parents can still find the material beneficial because they can offer solutions to the challenges of teaching practice which have been identified in this project work. They can as well find it useful by reading the work in order to know some of the challenges which student-teacher faced during teaching practice. Furthermore, having identified some of the challenges during teaching practice and proffering solutions will go a long way in directing student-teachers in the right course thereby equipping them to be competent, qualitative, and skillful teachers who will teach the future generation. In that direction, parents have benefited as their children will acquire sound education.
This work has challenge researcher to apply the theoretical knowledge of research work into practical or real project work, thereby equipped them with rudiment of research work.

Scope of the Study
This research work was limited to the challenges which the student-teachers encountered during their teaching practice using Enugu State College of Education (Technical), Science Education final year student-teachers.
This research work does not in any way investigate problems associated with policy implementation in entire state but mainly focuses on those challenges that influence effective performance of student-teachers during their teaching practice, challenges and solution.

Research questions
In order to examine student-teachers’ challenges during teaching practice, the following research questions were formulated:
i. To what extent are the exact roles of the student-teachers?
ii. What are the challenges encountered by student-teachers during teaching practice?
iii. What are the solutions that can be administered to the challenges encountered by student-teachers during teaching practice?