Our project will establish within the Nigerian public secondary school system, 120 teachers from North Eastern, North central and South-western regions of Nigeria who are skilled in non-traditional teaching and gender responsive pedagogy, as anchors for a movement for improved gender sensitive teaching and STEM engagement especially for secondary school girls. Teachers are equipped with localized Mobile app, STEM-in-a bag kit, and curriculum to facilitate after-school STEM programs for students.
Many of Nigerian teachers have very poor Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) - they are inadequate in terms of knowledge of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) subject matter and pedagogical skills. Quite remarkably, regular poor academic performance and low enrollment of female students in STEM are fundamentally linked to application of ineffective and gender insensitive teaching methods by teachers to impart knowledge to learners as well as lack of hands-on experience.
120 STEM teachers will participate in a 1-week training workshop to acquire gender sensitive pedagogy skills, creative and problem solving skills and integrative STEM and ICT teaching methods. Our workshop will use hands on activities, lectures, tutorials, experiments and field activities, led and presented by experts and professionals in the field, as an avenue to engage teachers and improve their competence in computer science and STEM programming.
Our project will increase the enrollment and performance of girls in STEM subjects, in public secondary schools located in poor performing areas. The long term benefit of our project is economic empowerment for girls through increased awareness and participation in the STEM economy. Also, it contributes to enhanced employability skills for young women who use the STEM and digital skills to improve access to information, capital and job readiness, ultimately, reducing poverty in Africa.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
