New Teachers’ Soft Skills and Productivity in Secondary Schools in Rivers State

ABSTRACT: The study investigated new teachers´ soft skills and productivity in senior secondary schools in Rivers State, Nigeria. Three research questions were answered while three null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 alpha level of significance. The theory was anchored on Social Learning Theory by Albert Bandura in 1977. The study adopted a correlational research design. The population comprised all of the 268 government owned Secondary Schools in Rivers State with 8452 teachers. The sample size for this study was 470 representing 5.56% of the population size using the Taro Yamane formula. Proportionate stratified random sampling technique was used to draw the 470 respondents from the strata. Two sets of instruments titled New Teachers’ Soft Skills Questionnaire (NTSSQ) and Productivity of Teachers Questionnaire (PTQ) were used for data collection. Face and content validities were ensured by experts. The reliability coefficient of the NTSSQ and PTQ were 0.90 and 0.88 with the use of Cronbach alpha. Multiple regression and Pearson Product Moment correlation coefficient were used to answer the research questions. ANOVA associated with multiple regression and z-ratio were used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 alpha level of significance. It was found that emotional intelligence and teamwork have a significant positive high relationship of 0.746 with productivity in secondary schools in Rivers State. It was recommended among others that the school principals should remember that the teachers are their colleagues and should avoid the use of offensive and abusive words that are capable and culpable of distorting teachers’ emotion.
KEYWORDS: New teachers, soft skills, emotional intelligence, teamwork, productivity