Abstract

This study is an ex – post facto research which compares the attitudes of some Nigeria university's teacher supervisors' and science teacher trainees' towards practical teaching. The study was carried out among the science undergraduate students who are pursuing career in Science education and teacher supervisors in the directorate of degree and part – time programme of Ekiti state university in affiliation with Emmanuel Alayande college of education, Oyo, Nigeria. One hundred {100) Science teacher trainees and one hundred (100) teacher supervisors selected from among lecturers in science and technology education participated in the study. One valid and reliable Teaching Practice Attitude Inventory (TPAI), criterion validity = 0. 67, and KR 20 value of 0.79 was used to collect relevant data for the study. Data analysis was by means of frequency count, percentage and statistics t-test. Result of findings revealed that, there exist a significant difference between the attitudes of teacher supervisors and science teacher trainees towards practical teaching. It also revealed that science teacher trainees' gender has no statistical significant effect on their attitudes towards practical teaching. Finally, it was found that female teacher trainees obtained higher attitude mean score, though not statistically significant, than their male counterparts, while some teacher supervisors exhibited negative attitude towards practical teaching. It was recommended that, efforts should be directed at mapping out strategies that would enhance the development of the right type of attitudes among university teacher supervisors and their students. It also recommended that all forms of gender bias should be avoided in the training of teachers.