RE-FOCUSING SCIENTIFIC LITERACY THROUGH THE NEW NCCE SCIENCE EDUCATION CURRICULUM IN NIGERIA (original) (raw)
Scientific literacy which is basically synonymous with the public's understanding of science is necessary for people in this age of technology to enable them use, cope and adapt to the technological inventions of the time. Education which has remained to be a social process in capacity building, sustaining humanity and indeed the vehicle for acquiring the requisite scientific literacy in any society has not been well positioned in Nigeria. Specifically, the basic education sector, which is the foundation for all forms of education, has been inundated with a myriad of challenges which militate against the realization of the scientific literacy goals. Central among the challenges is the problem of teacher production for the Basic Education sector. There has been a glaring dislocation/mismatch between the type of teachers trained in Colleges of Education (COEs) and the work they do at Basic Education level. The training programs are devoid of synchronization between the content and pedagogical knowledge with pitiable implementation affecting the quality of their service delivery, thus compromising the goals of the Universal basic education (UBE). The National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) within its constitutional mandate responded to the circumstance and radically overhauls the old Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) curriculum to a new service focused one. Salient features in the renewed hope include; differently packaged areas in which prospective teachers are expected to specialize, paradigm shift from teaching to learning in which pre-service teachers will be provided with opportunities to acquire professional skills and attitudes and a well articulated implementation framework. The overall implication of the reform program will be re-orientating the pre-service teacher production pipeline for a solid foundation of scientific literacy delivery. This paper therefore mirrors the interplay of the reform effort at the basic education level with the probable improved state of education quality in general as precursor to sound scientific literacy base.
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