Chapter three

innovation in education
Objectives of this unit
As the result of studying this unit, you should be able
to
 Givebrief account of some educational innovations of
relevance to Africa and the advantages they offers.
 State
the main difficult that have to be overcome if an
innovation is to be successfully integrated into a national
educational system
 Describe how to plan the evaluation of an education
The following key words are also used in this chapter their
definition will be found in the unit indicated by the number in
brackets.
 Assessment
 Audio visual aids
 Culture
 curriculum
 Discovery
 Environment
 evaluation
 Hardware
 Innovation
 Media
 Play and role
 Society
 Software
 Values
 The purpose of innovation

More relevant of education

 there
are good philosophical reasons for seeking to
innovate in education.
 One of these is that our efforts are teach is relevant
to the aims and objectives our pupils, the values of
our culture and the resource at our disposal.
 Another is that, the knowledge changes in response to
books we read discoveries we make or experiences we
have, teaching must respond to these changes.
 If it is that not the society would die.
 Theinnovations that follow are just some of the many
examples that make education more relevant and
responsive to the contemporary world, and to create more
quickly and effectively the kind of society we want.
 Alternative schools : are those that break with
convention in their aims, organization or methods of
instruction, some have called themselves free schools
because they emphasize their independence to choose
what is taught and the way the school is run.
 Othershave stressed some particular philosophical aspect
of education; for example the united world colleges have
sought to break down international educational
boundaries as possible.
 The idea of alternative school is quite different from
alternatives to schools. the former accepts the basic
idea of institutionalized education; the latter rejects
the concept and is searching for entirely different
ways of providing education.
 Themost common expression of alternatives to
schools is found in none formal education.
Community education
 Seeksto integrate the child into the community and
involve the community in the education of its children.
 Fresh
attention is being paid to it in order to correct the
damaging trend towards isolation which schools have
developed as they have sough independence and resisted
community interference. This new desire for integration
produces differences concept.
Integrate learning

 Isan attempt to avoid the fragmentation of

knowledge that results from teaching separate
subjects in school.
 Isapplied in schools usually in relation to the
curriculum. As an innovation it tries to rectifying
the divisive effect that the old concept of learning
as a discipline pursued in the study of subject has
upon the child’s concept of knowledge.
 Lifelong education: aims to provide people of all age with
the means of receiving instruction in whatever they need to
know at such times as that knowledge is necessary.
 sometimes known as continuing education, is the provision at
appropriate times the lifetime of each individual of various,
learning experiences and activities, both formal and none-
formal, which aim to enhance the individual’s quality of life, and
enable him to contribute more effectively to the development of
society.
 Lifelong education is now recognized as common human need
because of the speed with which knowledge grows and society’s
 Resource based learning: is system of learning that
depends on resource rather than teachers. It allows
individual pupils to progress at their own pace and learn
dependently.
 Resource as applied to education include any media or
materials that help learning. They therefore include those
thinking that aid learning directly such as books and audio
visual aids; or the so-called software and hardware of
educational technology.
 Work study is generally used in the context of
vocation training where a person learns his job
by working under supervision, as in an
apprenticeship instead of the classroom.
 However, an increasing number of schools in
Africa are going over to productive work.
 Improved learning and teaching

Itis said that necessity is the mother of

invention and so it should come as no
surprise that a number of innovations have
evolved from the perennial problems that
face teachers both as to how they teach and
how they organize their pupils learning.
The innovation that follow are just some
examples of the interesting experiments
that have been going on in education to
make teaching more effective and
adaptable to the needs of modern
education
1. Competency-based education: is innovational concept
in learning and teaching that identifies various
competencies or skills that have to be mastered by pupils.
 It measures pupils progress and achievement in these
against set standards so as to assess the effectiveness of
the teaching.
2. Continues assessment is a way of recording a
pupil’s progress without using examinations.
 it depends on carefully kept assessment of the
child’s work.
 building up gradually into a profile his performance
 considerable all the child’s skills in the subject area.
3. Credit: are rewards given to students for the satisfactory completion of
courses of study. A student will normally add to his credit until the required
number for a major qualification has been accumulated.
4. Games and simulation; in school, simulation is often introduced as a
game and therefore seen as an extension of play.
 it offers all the advantage of play with effectively fun
 one form of simulation is role play
 Every body to express his own interpretation and how to behave.
 simulation is used in training people for such different roles as
salesmen, contractor pilot and etc.
 5. incentive schemes: are firmly based on the idea of
reward.
 On method that has had some success with difficult
children is awarding praise special tokens such as stars
whenever they behave in some desired way, whether it be
in doing good work,
 Token can be exchanged for small gifts such as sweets, toys
or books
 It has worked well in these circumstance and helped the
6. individualized learning: allows each pupil to pursue his own
learning in his own way and at his own speed.
 Allows child to choose what he wants to study
 It also helps the child with physical, psychological, emotional or
cultural.
 teachers ensure that every child have sufficient material to
prepared assignment.
 also keep the progress of each pupils even though they are at
different stages and learning different thing.
 Open-plan teaching : is an attempt to obtain the most
flexible allocation of teaching space possible.
 byremoving the wall that usually divide classes teaching
groups can be varied in size, merging when desired, and
have immediate access to common resource.
 Peer teaching: is known also as the monitorial system. In
it pupils- or what the Chinese call little teachers-
supplement the work of the teacher by communicating to
other pupils those lessons they have been taught by the
master teacher.
 Discussion
1. Module
2. Programmed learning
3. Resource centres
4. Study centres
5. Teacher’s centres
 Better value for money

 The spiraling costs of education have given urgency to the need

to make education as efficient as possible;
 Obvious waste occurs with children who drop out of courses
before they have complete them and with children repeating work
they already done when they are kept back a year.
 But many other kinds of waste and inefficiency occur in education
both in the use of resource and in the adoption of inefficient
method of teaching and administration educational planners have
not been without blame in this matter,
 Cont.…

 Both the providers of education in the form of ministries and the

users in the forms parents and tax-payers are looking for value
for money in education.
 The innovation which follow are just a few example of many that
have been tried in order to save money and make better use of
existing educational resource.
 Some have called upon untapped resources others have drawn
attention to the grossly under-used facilities available in every
school; while yet other have introduced imaginative and
enjoyable teaching techniques to education.
1. Accountability: has received attention in recent years
because of falling standards in schools, rising costs and
fact that teaching is one of the most secure jobs in the
public sector. Teachers have little else than a moral
sense of duty to do their best for their pupils both in
learning and training. Consequently educational
administrations have became increasingly concerned
that teachers should be made accountable for the work
they do.
 Cont.…

 The problem in applying The principle of accountability lies in

the difficulty in deciding how teacher’s work is to be
measured.
 In one part of Africa the standards has been placed on
examination results and head teachers whose schools do not
obtain satisfactory results have been replaced.
 In another part, teachers are employed only on five-year
contracts at the end of which their work is assessed, and their
contract renewed or terminated according to the quality of
their work.
2. Auxiliary school personal are people usually without
teaching qualifications who help in schools. Surveys of
primary school teachers have revealed that only one quarter
of their time in school is spent actually teaching; about the
some is spent on supervisory and administrative jobs, and the
rest in preparing lessons and making children’s work. There
are four main types of auxiliary school personal
a) teacher aides : these are people who help in the classroom in
such They have many roles in the classroom and often do tasks
like attendance, assisting students, grading, leading small group
instruction, supervising field trips.
b) Paraprofessionals: these are personnel with particular
qualifications who can be used in the school to assist with
teaching local arts and craft or playing musical instruments and
sports training, library organizations or medical technicians.
c. Technicians: these are people with technical training who are
employed to help teachers as laboratory technicians, audio-visual
technicians etc.
d. School aides: These undertakes a variety of essential task in
school administration such as
I. office duties: communication, duplicating, keeping accounts,
registers etc.
II. supervisory duties: looking after children at play, at meal times
and while moving about large schools etc
III. domestic duties: cooking meals
IV. Health duties: first aids, general welfare of pupils.
3. Correspondence education enable students living
in remote or isolated part or who are employed in full-
time job or suffer form some physical handicaps to carry
on their education at home by lessons through the post.
Correspondence course also help pupils who may be
attending school that are unable to provide a particular
course by supplying the material to the school and
allowing the school to supervise the pupil’s progress.
4. Educational broadcasting is now firmly established in
Africa with all but a handful of countries operating special
services to schools in radio or television and in many
cases both.
Some countries responsibility for schools broadcasting
rests on the ministry of education, with the national
broadcasting organization providing the transmission
services only. In other, the broadcasting organization
provides the whole service.
 Cont.…

 Educational broadcasting has been used effectively to do a

number of different kinds of job in addition to those already
mentioned. For example Tanzania has used educational
broadcasting to improve health in the villages, Botswana has used
it to help people understand government’s development plan;
Senegal has used it to revive life in those areas which are losing so
many of their young people to the towns.
 Cont.…

 5. The extended school days is a way of making more

efficient use of school buildings and facilities than occurs in the
normal six-or seven hour school days. In the extended school
day the school is open for perhaps fourteen hours a day and
classes in the same options may be given at different times.
Offering pupils a wider choice in the subjects they take.
 6. The extended school year is another way of getting more
from school building and equipment. The normal school year is
only 200 days long, leaving 165 in which the school is hardly
used at all. Some schools have abandoned this pattern and
keep open the whole year long except for public holidays.
 7. performance contracting is an agreement
between a school system and a contractor for the
instruction of a group of pupils. It offers an alternative
to employing permanent teaching staff.
 In principle it is similar to the practice of some city
parents who employ private tutors to coach their
children for particular courses or examinations. The
contract usually has substantial bonus rates for
success.
 8.Shift systems a convenient way of getting more
use out of a school building than would be possible in
the normal way. The usual division is to have one
school operating a morning shift and another an
afternoon or evening shift of the same number of
hours. Each school has it own head teacher, staff and
administration.
Thank you for your Attention