Uwase Uwase Esuong, Uwem Daniel Udom & Ofonime Friday Udo
Abstract
Teaching is a specialized application of knowledge, skills and attributes designed to provide unique services to meet the educational needs of the individuals and society. Teaching is a noble profession that is as old as creation itself. However, no quality of education can rise above the quality of its teachers. Thus, since teaching has met the required criteria to be called a profession, its practitioners must be given adequate training in line with other professions in the world. This paper discusses in-depth the teaching profession, its standard and global best practice. It further analyzes the mathematics teaching and learning process with emphasis on developing teaching competence in a typical mathematics classroom. The paper also discusses professionalism of the mathematics teacher who must be very resourceful with skills and inclinations to create an intellectual community in the classroom. The paper provided an avenue for improvement in certain basic mathematics content pointing out the errors certain teachers make in teaching those contents. It finally recommended that adequate attention should be given to the teaching profession in terms of its funding, and that mathematics teachers’ quality should be of utmost priority in order to improve the output of students in mathematics. Keywords.