By Kenneth Nwabudike Okafor
At some point
in my life I had to stop blaming somebody else, including my series of
mathematics teachers, for why I detested and struggled with mathematics as a
subject while at school. At least until I discovered my numeracy skill was
crucial for the vocation I was to commit a significant part of my future toward.
The funny thing is that over the course of several years I found my
discomfiture with mathematics rather wide spread.
But no matter
how we feel mathematics is key; vital and a lynch pin to what we desire so
much: technological innovation and development. No matter how we also feel
about the issue there are several poor mathematics teachers within our school system,
simply because they were also themselves taught by some other poor mathematics
teachers.
My pursuit of
revitalizing my interest in mathematics led me directly to discovering "STEM" Education.
In brief, STEM
is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific
disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — in an
interdisciplinary and applied approach. The four parts of STEM have been taught
separately and most of the time independent from each other for years. By adopting
the STEM philosophy Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics all play
an integral part in the teaching of the whole. The science, engineering, and
mathematics fields are made complete by the technology component that provides
a creative and innovative way to problem solve and apply what has been learned.
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A controversial US’s Washington State University study has found men may be more
likely to pursue careers in science and engineering simply because they think
they are better at the subjects than women. (SEE POST HERE)
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According to Brown, Brown, Reardon & Merrill
(2011) in Ejiwale (2013) STEM education is defined as "a standards-based,
meta-discipline residing at the school level where all teachers, especially
science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers, teach an integrated
approach to teaching and learning, where discipline-specific content is not
divided, but addressed and treated as one lively, fluid study.”
Ejiwale (2013)
states the implementation of STEM education in schools across the globe is to
prepare the future workforce with strong scientific and mathematical
backgrounds to enhance skills development across STEM disciplines.
Education
professionals, governments and employers around the world are well aware of the
vital importance of the STEM fields for economic growth and innovation. By
extension, students are ever more aware of the great job prospects and earning
power they can command as a result of a STEM education. Needless
to say, emerging markets also play an important role in shaping global trends
in the STEM fields, whether fueled by population and economic growth, as in the
case of Nigeria, or by major scholarship programmes, such as Brazil’s Ciências
sem Fronteiras. And the strong global demand for STEM is not just a
function of burgeoning science and technology professions in emerging markets.
Major destination countries are also facing significant labour market gaps in
STEM fields within the next decade, partly due to increasing market demand and
partly to projected large-scale retirements of current STEM professionals.
However Nigeria has uphill battles to face here.
As with my mathematics teachers of the past it turns out that
the competence of STEM teachers presents a challenge as well.
Research
has determined that the quality of teacher preparation is crucial to helping
students reach higher academic standards. Unfortunately, many classrooms today
are filled with under-prepared individuals because they have received poor
quality training or none at all. Many scholars have conducted research over the
past two decades with regard to the relationship between poor preparation of
teachers in mathematics and science and student achievement (Rule &
Hallagan, 2006; Hibpshman, 2007). This work resulted from two events, shortage
of literature to identify reliable predictors of student achievement based on global
measures of teacher qualifications (Hill, Bowan & Ball, 2005) and about the
components of knowledge necessary for teachers to perform successfully
(Shulman, 1986). However, it became known to researchers that what was known about
teacher competencies was insufficient to explain student achievement
(Hibpshman, 2007).
Specifically, two Nigerian scholars have laid bare the
current state of STM Education in Nigeria:
Oriafo (2002) describes Science, Technology and Mathematics
Education in Nigeria is characterized by inadequacy of content and ineffective
methodology by teachers, dearth of facilities, equipment and materials in our
laboratories, as well as dominated socio-cultural lapses
In turn, Nwachukwu (2009) asserts the present scourge of
unemployment in Nigeria clearly reveals that the STM Education taught in
schools at all levels do not prepare Nigerian graduates to function well as
expected. The courses which should be taught as hands-on and minds-on practical
courses are basically taught theoretically; this makes the learners not to
benefit maximally from their education.
STEM Education is sine qua non for technological development!
At the
moment Nigeria, like most of Africa, lags behind in technological development
as well as technology-driven economic activities.
A United
Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) funded study by Sanjaya
Lall and Carlo Pietrobello, with the assistance of Joseph Oko Gogo (Ghana),
Geoffrey Ngugi Mokabi (Kenya), Godwill George Wanga (United Republic of
Tanzania), and Paul N. S. Sagala (Uganda), based on Kenya, Ghana, Uganda and
Tanzania as Case Studies, entitled Africa’s
Technology Gap (2003) found that:
Sub-Saharan Africa is lagging not just in terms of volume but also in
terms of technological content in its manufacturing activity. In certain
largely traditional activities, it is possible to remain competitive with
unskilled cheap labour and by processing natural resources. However, this base
is eroding steadily. In almost all industrial activities, competitiveness involves
technological change, new organizational methods, flexible response, greater
networking, and closely integrated production systems across firms and regions.
The new competition requires better technological capability in every country,
regardless of resource base and location – even in countries that are not at
the frontiers of innovation.
African manufacturing does not show many signs of such upgrading. Its structure
remains dominated by low-level processing of natural resources and the manufacture
of simple consumer goods aimed at domestic markets. There are few supply
linkages between large and small enterprises. Productivity growth is poor. Capacity
utilization has fallen below its peak of many years ago; a significant part of recent
growth comes from utilizing existing capacity, rather than building new capacity.
Technological efficiency is relatively low, with little sign of technological dynamism
or innovation (Lall and Wangwe, 1998). African firms are well below international
"best-practice" technical
levels, and below levels reached by other developing countries (Biggs, Shah and
Srivasatava, 1995).
As one
commentator puts it "This means, technology now
belongs to large corporations and people have increasingly become jobless, job
seekers and indeed marginalized in the industrial development, production and
employment sector."
All of these made me whimsical and I realized that there were
too many lost opportunities for Nigeria to have harnessed her past, for Africa
to have better harnessed her former competitive advantage.
Past
researchers revealed that Africans developed arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry
and other advanced mathematical science (Diop, 1974). They employed these concepts
in the construction of pyramid, mathematical calculations relating to the
flooding of Nile, and in the division of land along the Nile valley. The
Egyptians also possessed considerable knowledge of chemistry, and the use of
metallic oxides is evident from the nature of colours applied to their glass
and porcelain. They were even acquainted with the influence of acids upon
colour. Hence, they were able in the process of dyeing/staining cloth, to bring
out certain changes in the hues by the same method adopted in our own cotton
works (Sweeting and Edmond, 1989).
In an
ongoing study, I am involved in I uncovered the role of Africans in fractal
geometry when I came across Dr. Ron Eglash work on
ethnomathematics.
Dr. Eglash
is an American cyberneticist, professor of science and
technology studies at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and author widely
known for his work in the field of ethno mathematics, which aims to study the
diverse relationships between mathematics and culture. His research includes
the use of fractal patterns in African architecture, art, and religion, and the
relationships between indigenous cultures and modern technology, such as that
between Native American cultural and spiritual practices and cybernetics. A
Fulbright fellowship enabled his postdoctoral field research on African
ethnomathematics, which was later published in the book African Fractals:
Modern Computing and Indigenous Design.
It turns
out that one of the major achievements found in Africa was the
advance knowledge of fractal geometry and mathematics. The knowledge of fractal
geometry can be found in a wide aspect of African life from art, social design
structures, architecture, to games, trade, and divination systems. The binary
numeral system was also widely known through Africa before much of the world.
It has been theorized that it could have influence western geomancy which would
lead to the development of the digital computer.
With the discovery of fractal mathematics in
widespread use in Africa, Ron Eglash had this to say, "We used to think of
mathematics as a kind of ladder that you climb, and we would think of counting
systems – one plus one equals two – as the first step and simple
shapes as the second step. Recent mathematical developments like fractal
geometry represented the top of the ladder in most Western thinking. But it's
much more useful to think about the development of mathematics as a kind of
branching structure and that what blossomed very late on European branches
might have bloomed much earlier on the limbs of others. When Europeans first
came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganized and thus
primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a
form of mathematics that they hadn't even discovered yet."
At some point in the Nigerian national life, we all
have to stop blaming events, historical incidents and others; we must seize the
moment. Clearly
what is needed is a reversal of lost opportunities adopting the STEM philosophy in conjunction with other strategies in order to catch up with
technological advances, technological development as well as technology-driven economic
activities.
References:
Diop, C.A. (1974). "The African origin of civilization". New York Lawrence Hill and Company.
Eglash, R.
(1999). African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design. New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999.
Ejiwale, J. (2013). Barriers to successful
implementation of STEM education. Journal of Education and Learning. Vol.7
(2) pp. 63-74.
Lall, S. and
Pietrovello, C. with the assistance of Gogo, J. O. (Ghana), Mokabi, G. N.
(Kenya), Wanga, G. G. (United Republic of Tanzania), and Sagala, P. N. S. (Uganda)
(2003). AFRICA'S TECHNOLOGY GAP. Case Studies on Kenya, Ghana, Uganda and
Tanzania. UNCTAD. July 2003
Nwachukwu, C. (2009). The relevance of the science,
technology and mathematics education (STME) to development of entrepreneurial
skills. Proceedings of the 50th Annual
Conferences of Science Teacher Association of Nigeria
312-324.
Oriafo, S. O. (2002). Refocusing science,
technology and mathematics (STM) education
in Nigeria: A book of
Readings. Agbor: Kmensuo Educational Publishers.
