"Teachers' Continuing Professional Development Programmes and Students' Academic Performance in Public Senior Secondary Schools in Nasarawa State, Nigeria"

This study investigated teachers’ continuing professional development Programmes and students’ academic performance in public senior secondary schools in Nasarawa State, Nigeria. Six research questions and one null hypothesis guided the study. From a population of 312 public senior secondary schools and 9,295 teachers; a sample size of 62 schools and 368 teachers was selected using the multistage sampling procedure. Two researcher-developed instruments titled ―Teachers’ Continuing Professional Development Questionnaire (TCPDQ)‖, and ―Students’ Academic Performance Profoma (SAPP)‖ were used for data collection. The instruments were face and content validated, thereafter a pilot test was conducted which yielded reliability index of 0.88 for the TCPDQ using the Spilt Half method and Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient. Mean Scores, Standard Deviation and percentages were used to answer the research questions; while multiple regression was used to test the null hypothesis at 0.05 alpha level. The findings revealed that there is a high extent to which continuing professional development programme are provided for teaching staff; and there were fluctuations in the SSCE results from 2014 to 2023. In conclusion, the study established that Teachers’ Continuing Professional Development Programmes are significant predictors of students’ academic performance in public senior secondary schools in Nasarawa State. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that schoo principals in public senior secondary schools in Nasarawa State should provide teaching staff with training opportunities targeted towards further enhancement of their level of effectiveness in lesson planning and delivery, classroom management, students’ assessment, and the use of teaching methods; and school principals should constantly analyze students’ performance data, and provide targeted support to students with learning difficulties in order to foster a culture of academic excellence in public senior secondary schools in Nasarawa State.