Causes Of Rural-Urban Variation In Teacher Effectiveness In Public Junior Secondary Schools In Bein-Gar District,Nimba County,Liberia

Today,one major challenge that Liberia has within its education sector is the lack of trained,effective and result driven teachers.This appalling situation has remained prevalence within the education system of Liberia such that student learning outcome has proven to be very poor,evident by the diminishing ripple effect on students’performances in public or national exams.Moreover,the proliferation of schools even in urban localities has further placed a greater demand for trained teachers.As the result of said demand,people considered for teaching vacancy are not thoroughly screened.Hence,the recruitment criteria set by the MoE is not rigorous enough to insure that schools administrators employ trained,effective and result driven teachers within schools.The consequentiality has been the presence of unqualified teachers in various classrooms across the country.Even though the critical importance of the effect of teachers on students’ learning outcomes cannot be over emphasized,the discussion on the institution of an effective school especially referencing learning outcomes has constantly stressed the need for an effective teacher and said understanding;teacher quality to student outcomes,has further propagated the demand for high quality teachers,against the background that an effective teacher is a dominant aspect in student achievement at school.This study employed mixed method of quantitative and qualitative nature.Data were collected through Survey method from 41 Public Junior secondary Schools in Bain-Garr District.The sample was collected through proportionate stratified sampling from rural and urban secondary schools to give sample size of 330.Questionnaires were constructed for data collection in line with Alan and Emma(2007).The study was also designed by two theories namely the Human capital theory and Education process theory.A descriptive research design of Survey nature was employed because teacher and student’s views were required in trying to understand the relationship between the various aspects of students,teachers and their measure of effectiveness.Through this study,new knowledge was generated on the impact of teacher quality on teacher effectiveness through student achievement and the study further invoke a debate on how to attract,develop and retain high quality teacher to rural and marginalized regions of the vast Liberia which could lower rural-urban achievement divide if considered.Furthermore,the research was able to make an important contribution to the literature and this contribution will enhance teacher effectiveness research(TER)from developing nations,even though with the absence of rich data sets.The research find out that teacher experience and professional development were positively associated to teacher effectiveness amongst students in rural schools than those in urban schools.Predicated on the research findings,couples of conclusions as well as some recommendations for practical intervention relative to the improvement of teacher effectiveness are proffered to national government,policy makers and others that may find the research useful in their line of work.