Evaluating History and Geography teachers’ skills in implementing coursework at the lower secondary school level

Purpose – The purpose of this study was to investigate Malaysian teachers’ mentoring skills in guiding students, History and Geography coursework at the lower secondary school level. Methodology – The study utilized a descriptive research design. The main instrument was a questionnaire, administered on 186 school teachers in nine randomly selected states in Malaysia. These respondents were teaching either History or Geography at the Secondary One to Secondary Three levels. Descriptive statistics involving means and standard deviations and inferential statistics such as t-tests were used to analyse the data collected. Findings – The ?ndings indicated that in terms of helping students to achieve course objectives and elements, the mentoring skills of both History and Geography teachers were moderately high. Findings also revealed that there was a signi?cant difference between the mentoring skills of trained and untrained teachers teaching Geography. There was, however, no signi?cant difference in the mentoring skills of trained and untrained History teachers. Signi?cant – The study implies the need to enhance teachers’ skills in mentoring History and Geography coursework. The weaknesses identi?ed can help relevant departments provide proper training to guide teachers to do better in school-based assessments in the classroom.