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Education and educational reform continue to be topics of great
interest to African scholars. Nigerian scholar Christiana Nkechi
Omoifo, for example, spent her six-month grant at the George Washington
University Graduate School of Education and Human Development
conducting a comparative study of science education reforms in
the United States and Nigeria. Both countries have reform projects
currently under way, and Omoifo hoped to identify U.S. educational
issues and best practices that Nigerian reformers should take
into consideration as they attempt to improve the way science
is taught and learned in her home country.
To further this end, the scholar attended workshops and training
on the technology used in U.S. classrooms, observed graduate courses
for teacher preparation, studied syllabi and curricular materials
for science courses and attended scholarly workshops on curricular
reform.
The scholar, a lecturer in the Department of Educational Psychology
and Curriculum Studies at the University of Benin, also closely
examined U.S. and Nigerian reform documents to compare how each
country is approaching reform. "Science reforms in the United
States of America," Omoifo observed, "mean more than
policy statements and restructuring of the curricula as
is the situation now in Nigeria."
From her study, Omoifo concluded that the Nigerian reform process
would be greatly improved if suggestions for reform were solicited
from a more diverse group of academics and professionals, if reformers
identified student misconceptions that might hinder their ability
to learn and if a more realistic timeline could be developed for
the project. The scholar was also intrigued by the emphasis in
the United States on teacher preparedness, an emphasis lacking
in the Nigerian plan. "Reform is not necessarily [the] same
as immediate improvement of the schools," she said. "Reform
is more about people than about policies, institutions and processes.
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