Advancing Teachers’ Instructional Methodology for a Productive Classroom in the 21st Century
The study was carried out in Ideato – North Local Government Area of Imo State, Nigeria, with a total population of 145 primary school teachers that were undergoing cluster training on the use of 21st century instructional strategies. The teachers were given the questionnaire that indicated most of the ALIS characteristics across the instructional system components (Teachers, Learners, Teaching methods, Instructional materials, Learning environment, Assessment/ Evaluation techniques) that anchor also on the constructivism approach to teaching and learning adapted from Gray (2012). Out of the 145 teachers that attended the one week training, 140 teachers filled the questionnaire correctly and were used as the sample size for the data analysis. Mean and regression analysis served as the statistical tools for data analysis and from their responses, they were not utilizing to a greater extent, the active learning instructional strategies in the classroom thereby still teaching traditionally and the learners were greatly cheated as the current 21st century practices were limited in use in Nigerian public/ government primary schools. The teachers were later taught how to use collaborative/ interactive instructional strategies and were strongly advised to employ the strategies in their instructional delivery. The study recommended that all the stakeholders should contribute immensely to advancing education, that teacher education programme curriculum needs to be revisited, revitalized and the primary school teachers of both pre- service and in-service be trained, retooled and re- trained for the best practices in teaching profession to be adopted.
Keywords: 21st, advancing, century, classroom, instructional, methodology, productive, teachers’