STRATEGIES FOR ENSURING QUALITATIVE BASIC SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS FOR SUSTAINABLE NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

Sustainable national development cannot be attained without laying solid foundation at the primary school level. This paper investigated strategies for ensuring quantitative science and technology education in primary schools for sustainable national development. The study adopted descriptive survey research design. The population was made up of 149 teachers(98 males and 51 females) from all the 115 pilot science primary schools in Plateau state. All the 149 teachers were used as sample. The study was guided by one research question and one hypothesis. The instrument used for collecting the data was a 25 item questionnaire developed by the researchers and validated by three experts. The reliability of the instrument was established using Cronbach Alpha coefficient and reliability index of 0.87 was obtained which showed that the instrument wasreliable for carrying out the study. The research question was answered using mean and standard deviation, while the hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significance using t-test. The result showed that incorporating innovations that are hands-on minds-on approaches which include scaffolding, inquiry approach, field trip method, process-based teaching method, games and play, cooperative learning, team teaching, discussion method, computer assisted learning and using pictorial representation are strategies that could be adopted by teachers for ensuring qualitative science and technology education teaching in primary schools, which will motivate pupilsinto developing interest in science and technology beyond primary school level, thereby translating into sustainable national development. It wasrecommended among others on the basis of the study that teachersshould adopt these strategies in teaching to ensure qualitative basic science and technology education at the primary school level which is the basic foundation of education for sustainable national development