By Dayo Adesulu

A member of the Forum for  African Women Educationalist, Nigeria Chapter, Ms Marie-Therese Sojinrin has lamented the lack of research training for teachers in primary and secondary schools.

She said, “generally, our teachers are not trained to be research oriented in their teaching approach, particularly the student teachers. When they go to the classrooms, they have this myopic view about methods of teaching which is just lecturing as opposed to teaching.”

According to her, “teaching is using a host of methods to ensure that the students understand what you are teaching them. It also presupposes that the teacher would allow the students to use their initiative in asking questions in class and answering whatever question the teacher has given to them. But what do you find? Generally, students from privileged homes have access to the computer and quit often they have information that the teacher does not have. Because of this, you find that when these students ask such questions and teachers don’t have the information, they tend to shut the student down.”

The former Principal of Queens’ College said, “I have experienced where; when a student answers questions beyond what the teacher knows, the child is marked down because the teacher is not aware of the information that the child was giving.

Sojinrin who spoke at the World Books Online held at Corona School, Gbagada urged schools to take advantage of online research to develop their teachers and students. She said: “Take this programme to teacher-training institutions where the teachers will know that this body of information is available for them to access on-line, to enrich their knowledge when they are going to teach the students.

She explained that if  teachers in training institution are trained and are used to the  online research method of enhancing their own knowledge, it will assist them when they go to teach in schools.

On reasons while students fail during examination, Sojinrin pointed out that: “students do not internalise the topics that they are taught, they just regurgitate without being able to expatiate on many topics.” According to her,  when you just put down a point and you are not able to explain, you do not get the full marks that you should. And when a student’s  performance is compared with a student across West Africa, we find that it falls short of the expected performance.

Going down memory lane, the former principal said gone are the days when students in Nigeria come first and second in WAEC adding, “Ghana is having an upper hand; and it is because our teachers are not exposing our students to knowledge beyond their text books and beyond what they know.

Sojinrin who slammed teachers who are fond of copying text book on the board for students to copy said, “It means that the teacher cannot explain what is in the text to the students. So, there is a need for teachers in training to be exposed to research to enhance the knowledge they have to be able to get the students to be globally competitive.
“We want a situation where a Nigerian student would go to England and be able to compete for various programmes such as essays, debates, projects and win. I tell you one thing from my experience, our students are very intelligent. We are just not using the approach needed to expose them to be globally competitive.

Answering questions

“For example, in the universities, the lecturers will insist that students buy their handouts with the results that the students are not allowed to read genuinely, to use their initiative to answer questions based on what they have read in books and what they have learned. Our lecturers now are not the same; the student is expected to reproduce what they have taught them.

Her words: “|In my write up as a member of the Forum for African Women Educationalist, I sent a memo to the national conference and told them that lecturers in tertiary institutions should be encouraged to write books, not give handouts. “Let them write books and let the books be published so that it will be available for everybody even outside the country and we can show other parts of the world that we have lecturers that are knowledgeable and they also have to share with other countries.