This book, PRE-PRIMARY EDUCATION IN NIGERIA: METHODS FOR EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING, adopts an integrated approach to understanding and teaching pre-primary school children. Though not so common in Nigeria, this approach is practiced in countries around the world and it yields the highest dividends and most sustained gains for children, their families and communities. The early childhood curriculum guidelines which address all the critical areas of early childhood care, such as we have in Nigeria, may be better implemented by using the integrated approach. In the introduction the book highlights some specific areas prescribed by the 2005 National Policy for Integrated Early Childhood Development (IECD) in Nigeria. These include: (a) Curriculum Innovations (b) Facilitating Innovations in curriculum, teaching and learning activities and hobbies (c) Specific roles and functions of education which include ensuring compliance and innovations in minimum standards and prescriptions, especially as they relate to IECD curriculum development programs and activities. [See Chapter 1] To achieve these prescriptions and other objectives, the book presents different ways of learning by pre-school children through play way methods using many activities from different themes with examples and illustrations. It shows how these themes and goals are achieved using the integrated approach and through play and creativity in the classroom. It shows how the classroom is innovatively and creatively organized and arranged with different learning and interest centres to facilitate learning and the achievement of the stated objectives. In summary, the book is designed to provide the teacher of young children a practical and result-oriented avenue for implementing the best quality education at this level, based on any available curriculum guide and more. The book includes detailed discussions on various methods and procedures for teaching various topic areas for pre-school learning. It emphasizes the play way method as opposed to lecture method or talk-and-chalk way of teaching, which is not suitable for young children. Play and its uses and various components are highlighted. The book illustrates how the use of learning and interest centres helps children enjoy learning and develop as total individuals and how this makes them become the best they can be and develop interest and love for school and learning.

Originally published in 1974, a comprehensive history of Nigerian Education, from early times right through to the time of publication, had long been needed by all concerned with Education in Nigeria, students, teachers and educational administrators. No one was better qualified than Professor Fafunwa to provide such a book, and in doing so he gave due emphasis to the beginnings of Education in its three main stages of indigenous, Muslim and Christian Education. Nigerian Education had been considered all too often as a comparatively recent phenomenon, but this book points out from the start that ‘Education is as old as Man himself in Africa’ and that both Islam and Christianity were comparative newcomers in the field. A historical treatment of these three strands which have combined to make up the modern Educational system was vital to a clear understanding of what was needed for the future, and most of the first half of the book is concerned with these Educational beginnings. The imposing of a foreign colonial system on this framework did not always lead to a happy fusion of the systems, and the successes and the failures are examined in detail. There was no shortage of documentary evidence in the form of reports and statistics during the decades prior to publication, but this evidence was frequently scattered and inaccessible to the student, so that the author’s careful selection of key evidence and reports, often drawn from his own personal experience, will be invaluable for those wishing to trace the development of Education in Nigeria up to the early 1970s. A knowledge of the history and development of the Nigerian Education system, of the numerous and intensely varied personalities and beliefs which have combined and often conflicted to shape it, is indispensable to all students in colleges and universities studying to become teachers. It is this knowledge that Professor Fafunwa set out to provide, drawing on his wide experience as teacher writer and educationalist.

This book makes a case for the mother tongue as the medium of education for the first 12 years of the child's life. It describes Nigeria's 6-Year Primary Project, which taught experimental groups of students in their native Yoruba in varying degrees for their first 6 school years, beginning in 1970. The book shows how the mother-tongue education program was planned, organized, and implemented. Chapter 1 traces the historical background of mother-tongue education, describing educational policy and the primary school system under British rule, and the changes made thereafter. Chapter 2 describes plans for the project including initial goals and funding. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss curriculum development and production, describing how panels developed materials for mathematics, science, social studies, Yoruba, and English instruction. Chapter 5 describes teacher preparation, including workshops and on-the-job training. Chapter 6 describes instructional programs and objectives for each subject. Chapter 7 examines problems encountered during the project. Chapter 8 offers a comprehensive evaluation of the project, including methodology and longitudinal achievement test results (from the five sample groups) that compare several variables, including urban and rural settings. Chapter 9 offers observations and recommendations for other countries, noting literacy-rate improvement and enhancement of the instructional language itself. (TES)

The international team of contributors to this book explore the debates and disputes surrounding the policies and documents which set out aspirational outcomes and benefits for children, their families and wider society. They argue that if these issues are not explicitly acknowledged, understood, and critiqued, emerging policies may potentially lead to disadvantaging, marginalising and even pathologising certain childhoods.