Chemistry Education and Enhancement of Agricultural Production: Implications for Food Security in Nigeria (Published)
This paper discussed the indispensible role of Chemistry Education in agricultural production and food security in the context of economic realities in Nigeria. Nigeria is faced with food crisis as a result of internal problems of insecurity, political conflicts, poor youth orientation, and dwindling national economy among others. The price of staple foodstuff such as rice, garri, maize, wheat are beyond the average Nigerians. The imbalance between agricultural food supply and food intake has forced the growing population to increasingly become dependent on imported foods. The challenges of food security demands effective application of Chemistry Education to change students’ orientation and mind-set towards applying the scientific knowledge and skills acquired to agricultural production and other agricultural businesses. The situation calls for a real exploit of the scientific knowledge via crop improvement; smarter use of agro chemicals like fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and effective management to ensure increased productivity and food security. Chemistry Education constitutes an excellent tool to catalyse the development of the necessary know-how, creative skills and attitudes among youths for enhancement of agricultural productivity. The onus of this paper therefore, lies in the identification and support processes and linkages that promote technological and attitudinal change towards agricultural production as well as the implications of using Chemistry Education to attain food security in Nigeria.
Keywords: Agricultural Production, Chemistry Education, Enhancement, Food Security, Scientific knowledge
Nigerian Universities’ English Teachers’ Education Programme and its Relevance to Senior Secondary School Reading Class (Published)
The study assessed the English teachers’ education programme in Nigerian Universities for senior secondary school reading class. The purpose of the study was to examine the influence of English education programme of some teachers on their service delivery; to look into adequacy of English curriculum in effective teaching and inculcation of reading skills to secondary school students, and to examine the factors affecting the reading curriculum implementation in secondary schools among other things. To achieve this, Twenty 400 level students of University of Ibadan grouped as pre-service teachers; and another twenty tagged as service teachers who were graduates from the same university; currently teaching in secondary schools; were randomly sampled for the study. Structured Interview as well as questionnaire in five point likert -type – scale was designed to collect data for the study. The results showed that English education programme offered for teachers empower their logical presentation of reading skills in classroom and also strengthen their level of reading. However, incompetence of some English teachers and inappropriate teaching methods affect implementation of reading curriculum. To further strengthen reading curriculum however, some pre-service teachers interviewed were of the opinions that readability and reading methodology should be included in the curriculum. Moreover, non – provision of reading textbooks is having negative effects on students’ learning. The results reflect the opinions of some pre-service and service teachers who from their experiences in English classroom have seen that most students especially in public schools do not possess English textbooks. Recommendations were made based on the results..
Keywords: Food Security, Technical skills, cocoa production
Technical Skills Required In Cocoa Production by Senior Secondary Students for Promoting Food Security (Published)
This study was carried out to determine the extent of technical skills acquired in cocoa production by senior secondary students for promoting food security in Cross River State. The study adopted survey research design. Four purposes of study and four corresponding research questions, as well as two hypotheses guided the study. The instrument used for the study was a structured questionnaire which has four points rating scale of Highly Acquired (HA), Acquired(A) Rarely Acquired(RA) and Not Acquired (NA) with their nominal values of 4,3,2, and 1 respectively. The instrument which contains 27 items was validated by three experts from the university of Calabar. The specialists’ observations and corrections were incorporated at the final stage of the production of the instrument. The reliability of the instrument was determined by using cronbach alpha to analyse the result of the preliminary test, and 0.92 was obtained as the reliability coefficient. The data collected with the instrument were analysed using mean and standard deviation for the research questions while t-test was used to test the hypotheses formulated. The result of the analysis revealed that the senior secondary students of agricultural science in Cross River State acquired technical skills in pre-planting operations, post-planting operations as well as harvesting and post-harvesting operations. On the basis of the findings, the following recommendations among others were that in the teaching of crop production the teachers should lay more emphasis on those skills in cocoa production
Keywords: Food Security, Technical skills, cocoa production