Influence of Teachers’ Competence in Subject Matter on Students’ Interest the Learning of Social Studies Education in Akwa Ibom State in nigeria

Within the background of perceived decrease in students’ interest in learning, the research on Influence of Teachers’ competence in subject matter on students’ interest the learning of social studies Education in Akwa Ibom State in Nigeria will be aimed at determining the contributions of students’ perception of teachers’ competence in subject matter on students’ interest in learning with particular attention to Social Studies Education. The ex-post facto research design was adopted for the study. Null hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The data for the work were collected with the help of a ITCSMSILS (Influence of Teachers’ competence in subject matter on students’ interest the learning of social studies) questionnaire as the working instrument. The stratified random sampling technique and the simple random sampling technique were adopted for the choice of samples from the population which consisted of all Social Studies Education Students in Akwa Ibom State. The face and content validity were established and the alpha Cronbach coefficient was used to establish the reliability of the instrument. The collected data was then coded and analyzed using the One way analysis of variance (ANOVA). The hypotheses were calculated at F-value of 10.30 to be significant at 0.05 level with a critical value of 3.00. The Fishers’LSD Multiple Comparison Analysis was used to determine the group means that brought the significance. All showed that students with moderate and high level perception of teachers’ characteristics experienced more interest in Social Studies Education than students with low level perception. Based on the above result conclusions was drawn that teachers’ knowledge of subject matter has much influence on interest in learning with particular reference to Social Studies Education. Some recommendations made including the need to ensure proper and effective teacher education in Nigeria.