ABSTRACT

The study investigated the extent welfare coping strategies correlate with retiring teachers’ perceived expectations in public secondary schools in South East, Nigeria. Seven research questions were answered and seven null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance which guided the study. The study adopted a correlational survey design. Seven hundred and forty-eight(748) retiring secondary school teachers drawn using multistage sampling techniques from a total population of 5,333 secondary school teachers whose retiring years would fall in between 2017-2021in the South East, Nigeria was used for the study. Two instruments titled “Retiring Secondary School Teachers’ Welfare Coping Strategies Questionnaires (RSSTWCSQ)” and “Retiring Secondary School Teachers’ Perceived Expectations Questionnaires (RSSTPEQ)”were developed and validated by the researcher and used for the study. The stability of RSSTWCSQ and RSSTPEQ was determined using Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Co-efficient (PPMCC) and overall reliability estimates of 0.86 and 0.76 were obtained for RSSTWCSQ and RSSTPEQ respectively.  The internal consistency of the items of the instruments was determined using Cronbach’s Alpha method which yielded overall estimates of 0.84 and 0.76 for RSSTWCSQ and RSSTPEQ respectively. Pearson’s r, R² (coefficient of determination) was used to answer the research questions 1-6, while linear and multiple regressions were also used to test the null hypotheses 1-6 at 0.05 levels of significance. Scheffe’s test was used for a step-wise comparison of the means for research question/hypothesis seven. The findings of the study revealed that: Learning to live a moderate life style, dedicating more time to religious activities, engaging in exercise to keep fit as well as participating in activities of union of pensioners predicted retiring teachers’ perceived expectations to a moderate extent while engaging in political activities and taking up contract appointment redicted retiring teachers’ perceived expectations to a low extent respectively in public secondary schools. The combined effect of welfare coping strategies (learning to live a moderate life style, dedicating more time to religious activities, engaging in exercise to keep fit, engaging in political activities, participating in activities of union of pensioners and taking up contract appointment) had a very high percentage contribution of 86.3%. However, the Scheffe’s test indicated that dedicating more time to religious activities had the highest percentage contribution of 17.9%; followed by participating in activities of union of pensioners with 17.7%; learning a moderate life style with 15.9%; engaging in exercise to keep fit with 14.1%; engaging in political activities with 11.1% and lastly taking up contract appointment which predicted 9.6% of retiring teachers’ perceived expectation in public secondary schools. Among the educational implications of the findings was that retiring teachers’ perceived expectations depend on their welfare coping strategies in secondary schools. It was thus recommended among others that there is need for periodic exposure of retiring secondary school teachers to seminar, workshop and conferences to achieve their perceived expectations.