Arresting The Deterioration Cycle In Nigeria Education
BY PROFESSOR ANDREW A. NKOM
Background: Teaching Perspective
The Inaugural lecture on The Fourth Type of Communication, presented from the perspective of a professional teacher, revealed the nature of deterioration in Nigerian education. The major cause is attributable to impunity; deliberate failure to abide by standards set down for promoting good quality education. This was further compounded by uncritical adoption of faulty assumptions or not using standards, which would have revealed their being incompatible to the Nigerian education system. The effort in this presentation is to identify specific takeaways from basic frameworks and examination of backgrounds of contents of the Inaugural Lecture
An education system is established for the purpose of facilitating teaching to attain learning. The education set up in mimicking of nature, is an in-breeding process where good parent stock provides for good quality products. Products from the lowest level provide the stock for the next succeeding higher level as organized in age groupings from early childhood to higher education in formal education. Maintaining quality therefore became a survival strategy and just as with crops such as in use of insecticides and fertilizers, it was necessary to find ways of maintaining and of sustaining quality in formal education. Standards have therefore been arrived at from centuries of experience in teaching and research for the purpose of maintaining quality across an education system. The research approach of quantitative research or research in education, has been developed as the process for detection and remedying lapses. In that sense, basically most problems in education can be detected and remedied, based on those standards.
Teaching in formal education, can be said to be the greatest human invention first in facilitating learning and as applied in human activities to sustain society. Supplied by nature for monitoring the environment for personal safety, teaching has adopted communication between human senses and the brain to assist the individual to learn for and by self. Knowledge as what is learnt is thereafter applied in inventions for society in knowledge gained by the individual. Both applications resulting from learning are in line with or mimic nature in teaching and learning.
Education as a system takes advantage of provisions of nature in the process of growth by organizing teaching in age groupings. Originally in: elementary; grammar or secondary; and rhetoric or higher education, this has been modified in education systems such as in Nigeria. There was also recognition of differences in types of learning naturally existing in subjects identified as Domains of Learning. Applied as components in learning, they comprise: the Cognitive; the Affective; and the Psychomotor Domain. In their collective application, this was recognized as the holistic approach to learning by which all three components are applied in the teaching and learning process. In effect, these domains are to be found in individual subjects.
Twentieth Century Developments
Two 20th Century developments as assumptions in teaching and learning, have disrupted this natural process in global dimensions in having been accepted as reform. The first was when use of technology as gadgets was linked to or presented as resulting in good teaching. The link came with introduction of mass communication gadgets into the classroom after World War II, when entrepreneurs had brought those gadgets into teaching along with non-teacher technicians as media specialists. Not having been so proven by research as is required in education, the gadgets were identified as Educational Technology; as mass media technology used in education. This link was obviously a sales pitch that has served to entrench commercial interest into teaching classroom. Those gadgets of Educational Technology, as updated and consolidated mass media gadgets, are identified as Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
In Nigeria, to promote those gadgets in schools, the National Educational Technology Centre (NETC) at the national level, Centres for Educational Technology (CETs) at the university level and Educational Resource Centres (ERCs) at the State level, were established. Along with this was also established an association by practitioners in the discipline to assist in the drive. The association started as Nigeria Audiovisual Association (NAVA), became National Association of Educational Media and Technology (NAEMT) is currently Educational Media and Technology Association of Nigeria (EMTAN) and members had applied themselves to the task. Deterioration had continued in education and these organizations had collapsed; was evidence that the technology-driven Educational Technology approach had not worked. Educational Technology has been upgraded into Information and Communication Technology (ICT), and is being applied as replacement in teaching in university education in Learning Management Systems (LMS).
However, in the effort to capture an African market with claims of meeting peculiar circumstances of Africa, a new technology-driven hybrid version of ICT has been created. The Open and Distance e-Learning (ODeL) version being tested in Nigeria, is to: develop context-specific educational technologies; enhance regional cooperation; address educational disparities and inequalities; and foster economic growth. The realities for which ODeL has been developed for Africa include: infrastructural challenges; cultural diversity; limited resources; cultural and linguistic diversity; and access and equity gaps. There is clearly a miss-match between challenges on the ground and solutions or how ODeL as technology, can close gaps in: infrastructural challenges, cultural and linguistic diversity, limited resources and access and equity. In normal application, both Open and Distance Learning and Online Learning are means delivery of material for learning at a distance; the latter requiring 100 percent electronic media. With acknowledged infrastructural challenges it is unclear how e-learning can be implemented.
The second development was of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) from the assumption that students are able to learn equally well regardless of racial differences. The Phyllis Schlafly Report (1993) titled ‘What’s wrong with Outcome-Based Education’ showed that the best test of OBE type system had been the experiment in Chicago with Professor Bejamin Bloom’s Mastery Learning (ML). The experiment having failed, the experiment was abandoned in 1982. However, a group of forty-seven participants from Outcome-Based Schools had met in 1980 and avoiding the term ‘Mastery’, had adopted the term Outcome-Based Education. Dr. Bill Spady a sociologist, as one of the leaders who had convinced adoption of the name became the leading proponent of OBE. Dr. Spady became the Director, International Centre on Outcome-Based Restructuring which worked to streamline OBE/ML. He thereafter received federal funding in a project to promote Outcome-Based Education ‘in all schools of the nation’ starting from Utah as an OBE/ML experiment.
The OBE system had a commitment that all students of all social groups; Caucasian, Hispanic, African American and Native American reach the same minimum standards before they could move to the next level. The assumption of reaching same minimum standards came from a misreading of specific objectives in a lesson in regular teaching; applied as an education system. This assumption had elicited the observation that if it was basketball, the net would have to be lowered to allow them score equally; a hint at lowering of standards. Learning even at the class level requires more than the teacher can give since each student comes with previous knowledge; accounting for differences in performance from students in same class taught by same teacher.
The OBE system had emphasis on examination, thus, the identification with ‘Outcome’ and schools were required to report Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in reading and math. Where poor results were reported, schools were to be held responsible and poor results could attract sanctions. Presented in OBE/NCLB (No Child Left Behind) or Universal Policy from 2002, the target was that all schools were to achieve 100 percent proficiency by 2013-2014. However, by 2010, thirty-eight (38) percent of the schools were failing, up from twenty-nine (29) percent in 2006. By 2011 failure was actual in fifty (50) percent of schools and 47 out of 50 states including Utah from where the experiment had started, were already engaged in some form of protests with one state actually going to court (Internet Search: 2014). The OBE system applied with NCLB nationally in formal education setting as experiment, had failed in the American experiment.
However, by 2010 Nigeria had adopted the OBE Quality Assurance System to replace the criteria-based School Inspection System it had got from Britain. Ironically before the Obama administration, America had started exploring possibility of adopting the criteria approach of the United Kingdom system which Nigeria was discarding. Also in 2010, South Africa scrapped OBE which it had earlier adopted in trying to mend its racial problems from the apartheid experience. However, OBE which had failed in America was applied in Nigeria in globalization agenda pushed by G8 Countries through external partners that had been brought in with it.
The G8 Countries, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom and United States of America as the key players, had started a globalization drive with the Jomtien Declaration in 1990. The global community made up of 155 countries at the World Education Forum, the World Declaration on Education for All (EFA) was adopted and community agreed to universalize primary education and massively reduce illiteracy by the end of the decade. The EFA Drive was reviewed ten years later at the World Education Forum of 2000 in Dakar, Senegal; where this presenter participated in the teacher education group discussion chaired by Professor Pai Obanya of Nigeria. The Millennium Summit in 2000 through the United Nations Millenium Declaration adopted the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) to replace EFA. The result in both EFA and MDGs was to bring into Nigeria the social experiment that had failed in the United States of America in universal application of OBE through the regular school system. Applied in Kaduna State as an example, by multiple external partners, this had brough about a high level of confusion that is continuing (Nkom: 2013).
New Initiative
Starting from detecting an inappropriate communication model being used as the theoretical framework for training teachers, the Instructional Communication Concept Model was developed based on normal classroom practice. The model was field-tested with teachers in schools made up of both trained and untrained teacher and established natural communication and a systems approach to teaching. The success of the field-trials and the findings provided the required theoretical framework which was then applied in developing a teacher training programmes. The Professional Diploma in Education (PDE) programmes, developed with eight areas of specialization, was approved by Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) with the decision that holders of the PDE certificated qualified to be registered as professional teachers in Nigeria. This approval by TRCN as the Regulatory Body was approval of both the theoretical framework and the specialization approach for teacher training in Nigerian education.
Takeaways from Background, Developments and New Initiative:
Two assumptions as reforms had been introduced into Nigerian education where it had operated from established procedures. Nature has provided humans with attributes for monitoring environment for self-preservation in communication between the senses and the brain. Advantage has been taken of these attributes from centuries of experience and procedures in creating the teaching activity for learning for individual preservation and that of society:
Education systems are established for facilitating teaching for purposes of learning, based on human attributes in the process of growth;
In the natural in-breeding process standards were set from centuries of experience and research to ensure quality in the teaching and learning process;
For combination of individual and societal applications in learning, concept of Domains of Learning was identified in natural and holistic approach to teaching and learning;
Holistic means that teaching of all subjects should include learning: theories, procedures or body of information; developing practical skills; and developing values and attitudes.
Distortion of this natural approach to teaching and learning in the 20th Century included;
Introduction of gadgets as technology into teaching with thoughts of replacing the teacher in the concept of teaching machine by mid-20th Century;
Entrepreneurs coming into the classroom through introduction of commercial interest and bringing financial interests and therefore salesmanship into education;
The sales drives for: Educational Technology, upgraded into Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are manifestations;
With claims of uniting people into a global village, technology, dividing people by cutting off social interactions or what makes for humans;
Applied in teaching, blocking thinking and creativity and encouraging plagiarism in a ‘cut and paste’ practice in university education;
Salesmanship reaching its highest peak in Nigeria with ODeL system being developed and marketed, with conditions created, specifically for the African market.
However, Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) has opened an opportunity by approval of theoretical framework based on Instructional Communication Concept Model in:
Acceptance of the Model and specialization approach in teacher training for application in Nigerian education in approval of resulting PDE programme;
Recognition of the paradigm shift from focus on technology as gadgets to focus on communication process in a systems approach in teaching and learning; and
Recognition of PDE potential to contribute immensely to the professionalization and sanitation of teaching in Nigeria (TRCN Registrar: 2009).
The Instructional Communication Concept Model and framework have been accepted at the global level in Editorial Comments by the authoritative International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning (IJITDL: Vol. 9 No 1, 2012 and IJITL: Vol. 10 No 7, 2013) in recognition as:
A useful addition to communication models of the twentieth Century;
Incorporating individualized learning, interactive multi-media, and social media;
Expanded communication model;
Updated definition of instructional technology; and
Broken new ground to make learning and instructional technologies more relevant to teachers and learners in Nigeria.
These comments and recognition have confirmed that:
Distance Learning and Online Learning are instructional activities to be so placed;
They therefore fall in application within Instructional Technology, the technology of teaching, rather than Information and Communication Technology (ICT);
The above activities are means for delivery for individualized learning already accounted for in the Individual Instruction Method along with Lecture, and Teaching as Methods, in the Model;
Teachers therefore require to develop skills of writing in the Open and Distance Learning (ODL) mode along with other skills for which Templates have been provided;
Media or instructional technologies are captured as recognized by the observation; apply to all three methods but application by formats as determined by the teacher;
Teachers for support have choices in: real objects or realia; simulations; video recordings; audio recordings; flat visuals; combinations; and in alternatives; first, second and third.
The Editorial comment that the Model had broken new ground to make learning and instructional technologies more relevant to teachers and learners in Nigeria is recognition that, The Model:
With these approvals has proved to be viable and applicable in Nigeria;
Is as viable for application in other African countries with similar challenges;
With the framework, therefore constitute a more suitable replacement to ODeL.
The Instructional Communication Model has presented in a visual form, the natural processes involved in teaching and learning to be assisted by technology. Its visual presentation qualifies its recognition as the Fourth Type of Communication along with Intrapersonal, Interpersonal and Mass Communication (Bittner: 2005). Developed independently, the Model as a Nigerian approach, is similar to the Asian approach; both are holistic approaches to teaching and learning to teaching and learning based on human attributes. With its global recognition (IJITDL, Africa with similar conditions and challenges therefore, has a more viable and suitable alternative.
FOR THE BACK COVER
FACT: Model and communication theoretical framework
Received Foundational Professional Approval: TRCN 2005;
Received Academic Approval: ABU Senate, 2005;
Commenced National Application: ABU Institute of Education: 2005/2006
Received Global Recognition: Discipline of Instructional Technology; 2012 and 2013;
Received Academic Approval: Tertiary Education Programmes; NSUK Senate, 2021
…Prof. Andrew Nkom is the first Professor of Instructional Technology in Nigeria (The technology of teaching).
