24th February, 2016
The United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) says it has commenced the training of academic staff of the Yaba College of Technology on teaching methodology.
Its Project Manager, Dr Taiwo Omomia, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday, in Lagos.
She said that UNESCO observed that some of the teachers in the college lacked certificate in education.
Omomia stressed the need to bridge the gap between the teaachers’ professional competency and their ability to impart knowledge to their students.
According to her, the seeming deficiency encouraged UNESCO to train the affected teachers on teaching skills or methodology so as to enhance their proficiency in learning and teaching process.
“We realised that just as every other thing in life, you have to continually be at the cutting edge.
“And the only way you can be at the cutting edge is by exposing yourself to new information. That is one of the reasons why we organised this workshop.
“The participants are academic staff that were recently employed.
“And we realised that these academic (members of ) staff, are all professionals in their own rights.
“But, we realised that not all of them have any certificate in the area of education.
“And it is one thing to have knowledge of a subject-matter; it is another thing to be able to pass it across to the students.
“And for some of us, we have had experience of teachers, who actually knew the subject-matter, but could not get the students along.
“And so, that became real issue.”
She said the training focused on techniques on current teaching methodology, students evaluation, curriculum planning, student motivation, teacher’s self –examination, classroom management, history and mentoring.
Omomia further said the training provided the participants with a comprehensive teaching technique for easy assimilation, equipped them with teaching skills and offer value added service.
She explained that the workshop’s theme : ‘Improving Teaching Skills Workshop for Technical and Vocational Educational Teachers’ tallied with the UNESCO-Nigeria centre’s vision of training and re-training.
Omomia said the college’s staff development programme was laudable, adding that it had encouraged many lecturers to acquire their doctorate degrees.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the training was organised under the aegis of the Nigeria-UNESCO’s Technical and Vocational Education Training Project (TVET).