title: INVESTIGATING THE USE OF INFORMATION COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT) FOR PEDAGOGIC CHANGE IN MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE (PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY) TEACHING/LEARNING IN NIGERIAN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS (HEIs)
Creators: name: Giwa, Kamaldeen
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2022

description: This study identifies how for decades in Nigeria mathematics and science have been difficult to teach effectively, with lower-than-expected learning attainment. The study aims to explore the factors influencing underperformance in these subjects, in the context of the introduction by the Federal Government of the Vision 2020 policy aiming to address sub-optimal educational standards. Traditional teacher-centred pedagogy is predominant worldwide, including in the Nigerian education system, in the delivery of mathematics and science curricula. Despite the importance of these perceived “challenging and hard” subjects to economic, scientific and technological developments, this is, generally speaking, an inferior pedagogy to student-centred pedagogy, which promotes both memory and comprehension. This study investigates whether the introduction in this context of more Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-based and Student-Centred Learning (SCL)-based approaches may improve the quality of teaching and learning. For teachers/lecturers to acquire the necessary competencies, pedagogical and ICT skills, they were specially trained to develop the technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK/TPCK) needed in the effective use of ICT in mathematics and science mediated lessons that is focused towards boosting students’ performance and lowering failure rates. A mixed methods approach was used for this enquiry. A purposive sampling technique was used to select all participants who are from the Departments of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Computer Science of a Nigerian university. Interviews, questionnaires and observations of classes mediated through ICT were used to collect data. The study identifies that the use of ICT in mathematics and science teaching is especially effective in the promotion of a student-centred approach, assisting the pivotal role of teachers as facilitators and enabling a more autonomous learning environment to be created, which in turn enhances students’ understanding of basic concepts. Furthermore, the findings confirm that the use of ICT provides new ways of communicating, learning, working collaboratively and likely improving students’ performance in mathematics and science. The findings also confirm that ICT adoption and integration into mathematics and science curricula is, nonetheless, still very low in the university involved in this study, while many challenges to the use of ICT in mathematics and science teaching and learning remain. This in turn leaves Nigerian teachers/lecturers generally still not availing themselves of student-centred pedagogy. This thesis recommends that the obstacles and other challenges to using ICT in teaching are tackled, in order to promote their effective use in higher education and to prepare Nigeria’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) graduates to be productive and competitive.