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Experts say teachers in Nigeria need urgent retraining to help them develop twenty-first century skills such as collaboration and teamwork, creativity and imagination, critical thinking and problem solving, consequently help students do same.
In its Education For All (EFA) Global Monitoring report of 2005, the United Nations Children Emergency Fund acknowledged (UNICEF), stated “it is commonly presumed that formal schooling is one of several important contributors to the skills of an individual and to human capital. It is not the only factor. Parents, individual abilities and friends undoubtedly contribute. Schools nonetheless have a special place, not only because education and ‘skill creation’ are among their prime explicit objectives, but also because they are the factor most directly affected by public policies.”
Recent technological advances have affected many areas of life: how people communicate, collaborate, learn, and, of course, teach. Along with that, those advances necessitated an expansion of vocabulary, producing definitions such as digital natives, digital immigrants, and the “21st-century teacher.” Some teachers are yet to start swimming with the tide.
“A twenty-first century teacher is somebody who can develop skills that are needed now, not skills that were needed in the past. Some schools are operating as if nothing has changed in the world. Some schools are still in the nineteenth century. This is not fair because parents pay tuition and should get value for money” Agata Wiliam, CEO of www.whybluesky.net, a polish organisation dedicated to driving education through children’s curiosity and teacher training told BusinessDay in an exclusive interview.
Wiliam added “we changed our focus to teachers and skills because schools are still focused on topics. They push a lot of information into children’s head and these bits of information are not useful if you cannot think critically. Critical thinking is the first skill we want to develop. Then come communication, collaboration and creativity. If you have these four skills you are ready to operate in the contemporary job market.”
In twenty-first century learning environments, students have stopped been mere consumers but have also become producers. Today’s students have the latest and greatest tools; yet, the usage in many cases barely goes beyond communicating with family and friends via chat, text, or calls.
Even though students are now viewed as digital natives, many are far from producing any digital content. While they do own expensive devices with capabilities to produce blogs, infographics, books, how-to videos, and tutorials, just to name a few, in many classes, they are still asked to turn those devices off and work with handouts and worksheets.
Sadly, often times these papers are simply thrown away once graded. Many students don’t even want to do them, let alone keep or return them later. When given a chance, students can produce beautiful and creative blogs, movies, or digital stories that they feel proud of and share with others.
Tunji Abimbola, director of education at TMAB Education Consulting and former special adviser to the Ogun State Governor on Education contended, “for starters, teacher training curriculum is obsolete. I was awarded a bachelor’s degree in Education from the University of Ibadan over 30 years ago. Three decades on, the curriculum has not significantly changed.
The education faculty of most Nigerian universities is construed as a dumping site for candidates rejected by other departments thought more ‘lucrative’.
Abimbola said, “the Federal Government’s campaign to recruit 500, 000 teachers may not be successful because we politicise education, we seem to have a knack for putting the wrong people in the wrong places. To solve this problem, entry requirements to education (for teachers) should be raised. The standard of education reflects the quality of instruction.”
STEPHEN ONYEKWELU
