Over the years, developing countries have experienced tremendous growth in access to information and communication technology (ICT). This growth in access to ICT has brought about massive changes in many sectors within the society, including education. Researchers explored teacher educators' attitudes and use of instructional and web-based technologies in teacher preparation programs. Researchers used Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in this study. Using a mixed-method design, researchers examined the relationships between educators' attitudes and the use of technology. Findings from descriptive statistics have shown that educators exhibited overall positive attitudes toward technology. Pearson's product-moment correlation coefficient revealed relationship exists between perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. Both quantitative and qualitative findings in this study have implications for educators and administrators in Nigerian education, especially, teacher preparation programs.
While teacher educators in Sub-Saharan Africa have increased access to information and communication technology (ICT), there is a lack of empirical research that describes the detail of educators' use of technology. This chapter addresses the gap in the literature with an exploratory mixed method study in a region of Nigeria. Researchers developed a survey to collect quantitative data from 190 teacher educators and added data from 10 interviewees to verify and the survey findings. The survey assessed the types of technologies in use and the demographics of teachers who use them. As expected, use is dependent on access, and overall access was high. Demographic differences in use were not great, but women were slightly more accepting than men, and more recent graduates more accepting than older ones. Teachers overall were moderately comfortable with technology. Researchers did not collect data about enabling factors like technical support or professional development. This suggests that next steps would be to define instructional software and assess technical support needs.
This study investigated exposure to air pollutants in rooms in low-income houses at Shomolu (R1), Mafoluku (R2) and Mushin (R3) in Lagos state. The concentrations of most measured exceeded limits of Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) for indoor air quality. Air quality index (AQI) in rooms studied was unhealthy for sensitive people in terms of CO, unhealthy in terms of SO 2 and very unhealthy in terms of NO 2 while moderate air quality was obtained in terms of PM 10 in most rooms. High concentrations of carbontetrachloride, formaldehyde and xylene measured could have been responsible for some of the health complaints of the occupants. Factor analysis shows that cooking with kerosene, use of gasoline generator and insecticide were the major contributors to indoor air pollution in these rooms. Therefore, there is need to urgently tackle poverty as all affected by these pollutants were poor who live in substandard houses without kitchens.
Multicultural education and culturally responsive pedagogy training should be within the core curriculum and begin in teacher preparation programs. This could be accomplished by providing opportunities for teacher candidates to research and acquire knowledge regarding cultural characteristics and cultural contributions of diverse students, pedagogy, instructional strategies, methods, and resources that support diverse student populations. This chapter presents the results of a mixed-method study that examined student teachers' perceptions and understanding of culturally responsive pedagogy and instructional strategies observed and utilized in classrooms during student teaching in diverse classrooms. Findings revealed that student teachers were inexperienced in terms of being culturally responsive educators. The authors suggest that educators engage student teachers in class projects within the scope of culturally responsive practices. The chapter concludes with a list of reflection questions for K through 20 educators.
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