The Universal Basic Education (UBE) Programme was introduced in Nigeria in September, 1988. Following this, in 2008 the Federal Government of Nigeria, through the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) developed and introduced the 9-Year Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) in schools by realigning all extant Primary and Junior Secondary School Curricula to meet the key targets of the UBE programme. In view of some contemporary and national concerns and to make the curriculum more practical, relevant, interest generating to the young learners and in line with global best practices, the 9-year BEC was recently revised in 2012 and its implementation has just commenced in September, 2014. This article is focused on the structure, special features and the implementation strategy of the Revised 9-Year Basic Education Curriculum with some emphasis on the Basic Science and Technology component as one of the key cluster subjects prepared with the aim of catching the young learner to love science, learn science and create change in the learners environment.

This study investigated the influence of family and parent types on the child rearing practices of parents of children in day care centres in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. Two research questions were answered and two hypotheses were tested. The population studied consisted of 12080 parents of children (age from birth to 3 years) in the 604 government approved crèche/nursery schools in the State. A sample of 1200 parents (respondents) was drawn from this population using multistage random sampling technique. The instrument used for data collection was a 51-item Child Rearing Practice Scale (CRPS) with Pearson's average reliability coefficient of 0.84 adapted to evaluate child rearing practices under the five domains of child rearing related to infancy, namely: feeding, cleaning, protection, stimulation and monitoring of growth and development. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while one-way analysis of variance and independent t-test were used where appropriate to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 significant level. The findings revealed that family-type and parent-type of parents of children in day care centres in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria significantly influence the child rearing practices of such parents. Parents of children from extended family do significantly better in child rearing practices than their nuclear family counterparts, while those of two-parent families do significantly better than their single parent and step-parent counterparts. The findings are of practical essence to day care centres, social welfare centres, government and some non-governmental organizations.

In Nigeria, open and distance education (ODE) is known to have offered access to many teachers who would have previously been denied educational opportunities based on where they live and work, poor economic conditions, social status, etc.. To this end, this paper examined the contributions of information and communications technology (ICT) in ensuring access and equity in the production of such teachers in Nigeria using ODE. This examination was based on existing data and evidence. The findings showed that most of the ODE institutions, like the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) and the National Teachers' Institute (NTI), operate the study centre system furnished with some ICT facilities, like computers, multi-media players, liquid crystal display (LCD) projectors, televisions, and printers, and do their registration and distribute course materials online.Notwithstanding, they still use the face-to-face mode of teaching and print technology. Some of the problems facing the use of ICTs in ODE institutions in Nigeria were discovered to include lack of knowledge and skills by some facilitators in designing and developing courses in electronic format, poverty and poor ICT penetration, poor Internet connectivity especially in rural areas, lack of computer education background by student teachers, electricity failure, low teledensity, and lack of universal access to ICTs. Consequently, it was recommended that education leaders and teacher educators should ensure that teachers who are products of ODE can competently use ICT as an enabler to optimize learning opportunities by developing teacher education programmes that use ICT-blended pedagogy to improve teaching and learning, especially in the area of curriculum delivery and assessment. In-service and pre-service courses in integrating ICTs in teaching and learning were recommended for student teachers, teachers, course facilitators, and education leaders.

The family is the foundation of the society. If the product of the family is bad, its effect in the society could often be adverse or brutal. The early experiences of a child in terms of the degree of care, type of control, and emotional tone of the home is formative, contribute to the child's temperament and influence his/her behaviour later in life.These early experiences of a child depend on his/her parents' child rearing practices, which in turn depend on some family variables and characteristics. Using available literature, this article identified influence of violent or aggressive role models, single and step-parenting environment, and low educational and class status of parents as some of the family factors or characteristics with a wide range of adverse effect on children's well-being and which can lead to varied anti-social behavior, such as aggression or violence in the individual. It was recommended among other things that for effective child rearing practices by parents and families, interventions that could increase the number of children reared by continuously married biological parents should be encouraged.Recommendations that could make for good child rearing practices and therefore stem the tide of violent behaviour in Nigeria in the long run were made.