Entrenching Quality Educational Output through Teachers’ Professional Ethics of Social Justice and Confidentiality

The study examined the entrenchment of quality educational output through teachers’ professional ethics of social justice and confidentiality in federal universities, South-South Zone of Nigeria. Two research questions were raised, and two hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The correlational research design was used for the study. The population of the study comprised 6,305 teaching staff and 32,613 graduating students in the 2014/2015 and 2015/2016 academic sessions distributed into the six federal universities in South-South Zone of Nigeria. Purposive and simple random sampling method of balloting were used to select 1,275 (20%) teaching staff and 3,517 (10%) students. Two instruments titled “Ethics of Social Justice and Confidentiality Questionnaire (ESJCQ)”, and “Graduate Educational Output Checklist (GEOC)” were used for data collection.  The reliability co-efficient of ESJCQ was determined using the Cronbach Alpha Analysis and a reliability index of 0.87 was obtained. Coefficient of R value and R² were used to answer the research questions, while the f-value of Simple Linear Regression Analysis was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed that the quality of educational output in Nigerian South-South federal universities can be entrenched by teachers’ adherence to the ethics of social justice and confidentiality. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended that, teachers and administrators should face 21^st century demands and adapt to tough academic and fiscal challenges by understanding the power of relational confidentiality and trust as an instructional tool for improving student performance. Furthermore, Institutional leaders and stake holders should ensure that teachers’ professional development programmes focuses on enlightening teachers on how to integrate equity, activism, fairness, justice and the elimination of oppression in order to positively impact students’ educational output.

Keywords: Confidentiality, Federal Universities, Quality, Social Justice, Teachers, educational output, professional ethics