Teacher education is the training of teachers, the formal type of teacher training is used to qualify them for teaching jobs at schools in Nigeria, from higher education level down to primary education. As expected, the better the teachers the better the quality of education in the country.
This is because if you have good well-trained teachers, they are going to impart knowledge with great expertise and in so doing raise the standard of education.
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The standard of education is affected by;
So, as you can see, quality teacher education is key to a high standard of education in Nigeria.
Teacher education aids teachers with the skills and knowledge and training required in teaching jobs, teachers are taught how to become teachers.
The objectives of teacher education span across many facets of education from building teacher confidence to mentoring their behaviors to training them on the use of tools and resources they will need, but one of the main objectives of teacher education is to prepare them for early childhood education.
Children spend most of their life learning about things, they learn new subjects, arithmetic, language, phonetics, and in today’s world, they learn coding, that includes interesting adventures in technology such as app development, robotics, and so on.
The first few years of a child’s life are dedicated to learning, and the teachers that are going to teach them are well-groomed to play their part in the child’s education. It is a foundational stage in learning and a delicate moment in their education, and care needs to be taken that the teachers are the best fit for them, and the environment is optimal for learning, because it will determine how well the students perform in subsequent classes or stages of their education.
Education at the early levels is known as basic or primary education, it is the core stage of learning and the centerpiece of children’s education. Teacher education is instrumental in developing early childhood education.
Why, you may ask? Firstly, qualified teachers have the technical know-how to handle a child, they are capable of making decisions that are advantageous to the children, and they can interact better with them. Anyone cannot simply enter a class and start teaching nursery rhymes, it is much more complicated than having a degree to back it up. Teacher education is required.
Secondly, teachers’ education is instrumental in primary education because the teachers are introduced to the use of tools and resources necessary to educate young minds. Kids’ lesson plans are different, their visual charts are different( for example it is made more colorful), their apps and software are different. Teachers are trained on the use of each and every tool they will need for teaching children at the basic level, meaning those at nursery and primary school.
The best moment to teach someone something is when they are young. It is backed by science that children have a more flexible brain, both literally and figuratively, and are more susceptible to accept new information.
Whatever the students learn is what they will use when they become individuals in the society to get jobs, and they will use this knowledge to contribute their quota to the growth of the community as a whole. So when teachers are engaged with them, they are actually grooming them for the future.
So, children are truly the leaders of tomorrow. And how their teachers perform today, will be part of the factors that will determine how they, the students, will perform tomorrow. Therefore, teachers are shaping the future simply by educating children today. That is why teachers’ education is very important in Nigeria.
Learning develops a child’s brain. It makes him or her develop the social skills necessary to communicate and to have social life and social connections, learning also develops the child’s attitudes. You will remember at school that you were not only taught how to read and write, but you were also taught how to obey the elderly, to do good deeds, to abstain from bad acts, etc.
Teachers are trained to pass on such discipline and mentoring to learners during teacher education courses. They are basically taught how to provide this disciple and mentoring, it is part of what qualifies them as teachers for early childhood learning, the ability to develop a child’s attitude towards good behaviors.
Teacher education in Nigeria is not perfect, it could use some changes and improvements. The Nigeria Certificate in Education programmes (NCE) and others similar to it are trying their best to provide teachers with the necessary skills and knowledge they will need to handle basic education or the education of the child.
Like we have pointed out earlier in this article, basic education is the foundation of learning for the kids, their performance in the first few years will help them for the rest of their education and the future of their careers.
Teacher education as one of the major factors that contribute to driving learning, is paramount that it has all the necessary requirements to make it work efficiently.
One of the ways we can improve teacher education in Nigeria is by providing funding, the Federal and state governments are usually responsible for a task of this magnitude. And the educational budget has been increasing year-by-year to tackle the issue of funding for teachers and teacher education. Between 2016 and this year, the education budget has more than doubled, it was ₦369 billion in 2016 and ₦691 billion in 2020.
Updating teaching resources and tools will also help improve teacher’s education. Constantly upgrading the tools the teachers are using in the classroom will make learning relevant for the students, and it will make the teacher’s work more productively and efficiently.