The Effect of Incessant Industrial Strikes on the Development of Physics Education and National Progress in Nigeria

Abstract

The Nigerian education system has been plagued by frequent and prolonged industrial strikes, with far-reaching consequences on various sectors, including physics education. This article aims to explore the effect of incessant industrial strikes on the development of physics education and national progress in Nigeria. To execute this research, three objectives and three research questions guided the study. In this study, a descriptive survey design was used with two hundred and sixty-five (265) respondents drawn from the total population of eight hundred and forty-six (846) which comprises of students, lecturers and technologist of Physics Department, FCE, Zaria as sample size for the study using simple random sampling technique. Sample size is chosen in line with Krejcie and Morgan (1970) sample size table. An instrument called “Effect of Industrial Strikes on the Development of Physics Education and National Progress Questionnaire (EISDPENPQ)”, with a reliability coefficient of 0.81 was used in data collection for the study. The Instrument was validated by three research experts in science education. All corrections and observations were effected on the instrument before administering it to the respondents. The analytical tools used were mean and standard deviation via the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 23). A mean of 3.0 and above will be considered as agreed/accepted while any mean below 3.0 will be considered as disagreed/not accepted. The end result revealed that there is high strike effect on the continuity and quality of physics education, including curriculum coverage, teacher-student interactions, and laboratory access, there is high socio-economic effect of industrial strikes on physics teachers and students, and strategies were accepted as a way to mitigate the effect of strikes on physics education. The researcher concludes by recommending that Government should allocate a larger portion of the national budget to education, ensuring that adequate resources are available for teacher training, infrastructure development, and curriculum improvement, among others.