Knowledge and Attitudes of Secondary School Teachers towards Retirement in Benue State, Nigeria: Implications for Lifelong Education

Abstract

This study investigated the knowledge and attitudes of secondary school teachers towards retirement in Benue State, Nigeria: Implications for Lifelong Education. The area of study was Benue State, Nigeria. Two research questions were raised and two hypotheses formulated for the study. The study adopted descriptive survey research design. The population of the study consisted of all secondary schools teachers in the state. Simple random sampling was used in drawing a sample of 330 teachers. A structured questionnaire developed by the researchers titled Knowledge and Attitudes to Retirement Questionnaire, (KAR-Q) and validated by experts with a reliability coefficient of 0.75 was used for data collection. Descriptive statistics of Mean scores were used for answering the research questions while Z-test was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 alpha. The study revealed that most secondary school teachers in the state have low knowledge about retirement and thus portrayed the wrong attitudes toward it. The study also revealed with that more male and female secondary school teachers exhibited the wrong attitudes towards retirement. The researchers recommended among others that management of secondary schools as well as non-governmental organizations should support life-long education (needs correction) and embark on sensitization campaigns to provide secondary school teachers with financial literacy and retirement education so as to raise their knowledge base and redefine their attitudes towards the phenomenon.