Enhancement of professionalism among beginner university teachers

Abstract

University teachers play a very important role of grooming educational learners. They are responsible for grooming highly skilled manpower that develop and sustain national economy. Beginner university teachers come with varied academic and professional qualifications. Some of them come straight from university whilst the others will be coming from the industry. On attaining higher degrees, teachers from high school, teacher education and polytechnics also join the university education system. Beginner university teachers must receive proper socialization from the university. Such socialization is called beginner teacher induction and it has to be offered very early before the new teachers experience a lot of adjustment problems. The nature of induction received by a beginner university teacher has a bearing on his/her professionalism. In order to nurture competent teachers, university leadership and its advisory committee must appoint mentors who will in turn design, develop and implement induction programs for beginner teachers. Beginner teachers’ induction programs will develop new teachers into lifelong learner masters. Accreditation of such teaching qualifications has to be done by the concerned university or a regional board that controls higher education teaching qualifications. Research showed that inducted beginner teachers stayed in their respective institutions and profession for a longer time than those without. Inducted teachers also performed better than non-inducted ones in classroom instructional practice and overall learner performance.