CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Effectiveness of government policies and efforts toward educational development in any nation or state depends on the extent to which teachers are empowered as well as how far the policies and programmes that can enhance teachers’ empowerment are implemented. Kay (2009:94) stated that, “an educational development can not realize its objectives and promote human development if teachers in such a system are not materially, skillfully, intellectually and otherwise empowered”. The major function of teachers is to teach especially in schools and to impart knowledge to individuals in the society. Teachers are principal agents of social change.
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Effectiveness of government policies and efforts toward educational development in any nation or state depends on the extent to which teachers are empowered as well as how far the policies and programmes that can enhance teachers’ empowerment are implemented. Kay (2009:94) stated that, “an educational development can not realize its objectives and promote human development if teachers in such a system are not materially, skillfully, intellectually and otherwise empowered”. The major function of teachers is to teach especially in schools and to impart knowledge to individuals in the society. Teachers are principal agents of social change.
Teachers are one of the agents through which a nation realizes her educational objectives. They inculcate the contents of the academic curriculum in the pupils and the students so as to achieve positive results. Teachers are agents of national development. They help to model the characters of the citizens of any nation or society. They impart skills, expertise, knowledge and ideas in the learners in order to enable them contribute positively to the social, economic and political development of the society.
Empowerment is based on the idea that when employees are endowed with skills, resources, authority, opportunity, motivation and held responsible and accountable for outcome of their actions, their competence, proficiency and productivity will improve. Thus, Udu and Amah (20l2) posit that, employee empowerment is a management strategy that aims at giving employee the tools and resources necessary to make confident decisions in the workplace without supervision. Empowerment of front-line workers is crucial if organizations want to understand core business processes, because from-line workers are closest to these processes and are the only ones who really understand how they work. Hence, in the educational industry, teachers are the front-line workers who really understand how a nation’s educational policies can be put into pragmatic effects in order to promote a nation’s social economic, political, cultural and other aspects of development. Teachers therefore need to be effectively empowered. Empowerment of teachers is very important because, it reveal talented, resourceful and competent teachers who were previously unrecognized and the processes of empowerment create circumstances in which such teachers can flourish, thereby contributing to the overall realization of a nation’s educational objectives. It is to this end that, lzunwa (2012) asserts that, empowerment is the process of enhancing the capacity of individuals or group to make choice and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes.
According to Federal Republic of Nigeria (FRN 2008) teachers’ empowerment policies include , in service training policy, staff promotion policy, scholarship scheme policy, mandatory continuing professional development policy and sandwich programmes etc. When analyzed further, one will observe that, the federal Government policy on teacher’s empowerment covers such areas as personal development of teachers, their professional development, motivational empowerment and infrastructural development. These areas of empowerment cover such empowerment tools as staff promotion, bonuses, fringe benefits, regular payment, availability of infrastructures for easy service delivery, in-service training, scholarship scheme, sandwich programmes etc.
These policies aim at making available to teachers all that they need to effectively discharge their duties. They are also aimed at allowing teachers greater freedom, autonomy and self- control in their works as well as active participation in decision making process in the education sectors, in line with the above views, stated in the Education policy of the Federal Republic of Nigeria(2008), lgwe (2010) state that the contents of teachers’ empowerment policies in Nigeria can be summarized in such government programmes as organizing periodic trainings, workshops and conferences for teachers, providing teachers with text books, note books and instructional materials, giving the teachers adequate remunerations, promotions and other incentives that will motivate them to bring out their best in the teaching process.
No comments:
Post a Comment