SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHERS' PERCEPTION OF THE NEED FOR MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION PROGRAMME IN JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN LAGOS STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Nigeria, like many other African countries, is made up of many cultural groups with diverse cultures making imperative the need to understand and accept each other‘s differences to foster unity. The prominence given to the three major ethnic groups in the country in the Social Studies curriculum leaves many other groups marginalised, thus resulting in the continuous existence of vices like loyalty to ethnic group, intercultural and ethnic tensions. The challenges for the Social Studies teacher is thus to devise a strategy through which all students can learn to accommodate people fromother ethnic and cultural groups which can only be accomplished with the introduction of a Multicultural Education Programme. This study, therefore, investigated the perception of Social Studies teachers of the need to introduce the Multicultural Education Programme (MEP) in junior secondary schools in Lagos State.

Ex-post-facto descriptive survey research design type was adopted for the study. Two research instruments were used namely, the questionnaire and focus group discussion guide. Needs Assessment-for-implementing-Multicultural-Education Questionnaire (r=0.85) was used to collect data from 1,000 purposively sampled teachers from 20 communities in Lagos State. Two focus group discussions (FGDs) were held with 20 teachers (10 each group). The two instruments were used to answer the six research questions raised in the study. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics and content analysis.

Majority of the respondents were favourably disposed to the introduction of MEP in Lagos schools ( x  2.96). They were also of the opinion that the introduction of MEP would strongly help schools to benefit from the diversity that characterised Lagos and its schools ( x =3.18) and help students to learn about the values (i.e. justice, equality, freedom, peace and compassion) shared by virtually all cultures ( x =3.10). The respondents also felt that for MEP to be effectively implemented, teachers needed to be adequately trained in MEP ( x =2.98). Furthermore, the respondents were of the opinion that implementing MEP would help teachers in ensuring that all students have equitable opportunity to learn and attain high academic standards ( x =3.02). The FGDs revealed that the provisions made for just one local language in the school curriculum limited the students‘ opportunity to learn other languages apart from their own. It also revealed that many social studies teachers found it difficult to explore the local community resources even where provisions were made for such in the curriculum.

The proposal for the introduction of MEP into junior secondary schools in Lagos State was widely accepted by the social studies teachers in the state. For a successful implementation of this programme, teachers have to be retrained to be able to cope with the new methodologies and curricular contents designed for the programme.