Sunday, June 28, 2015

KENNETH’S KREATIVITY KONFETTI: Creativity & Innovation — "STEM" Education As Backdrop To Technology Development/Transfer


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.

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)

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.

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