Expanded history

The long, personal story which will be narrated as briefly as I can, started about 64 years ago. It was 1956 as a 5-year old when I had my first lesson in nature study in a primary school in Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria. My class had a nature corner where odds and ends were kept. These included twigs, dry bones of some animals and germinating seeds in small tin containers. On the wall, were a few charts of human skeleton and parts of the Hibiscus flower. We had two lessons of nature study per week. During a typical lesson, the teacher wrote few notes on the blackboard, engaged us in discussions on the topic and afforded us the opportunity to go outside the class to pick a few specimens.

We loved the outdoor segment of the lesson. It allowed us to play, explore our environment and nature and clear our sleepy eyes since nature study lessons were timetabled for the afternoon after our mid-day meal. My interest in science was kindled as it provided answers to some of my puzzling questions relating to nature.

In 1963, I had a more exciting encounter with science. I went for admission interview in St. Malachy’s College, Sapele. Before the interview, we roamed around the school compound admiring the features where, hopefully, we would spend the next five years. We walked past the chemistry laboratory. A practical class was in session and we saw “magic” happen right before our eyes. There was a colourless liquid in a conical flask and the teacher added few drops of another colourless liquid and the mixture turned pink! The teacher went on to release another colourless liquid from a long tube (burette) and after a while, the liquid in the flask turned colourless again. We all stood there in amazement and nearly missed our interview since we were too engrossed to hear our names being called.

This dramatic event was a turning point for making me sign up for a career in science. It also etched in my mind that one of the potent pathways for making children perform well in science is to make its delivery fun and activity oriented. The quest for CTCA had begun.

Let us move on with the story. In 1970 I had the honour of teaching science in a secondary school in Lagos (Holy Saviour’s College, Mushin) and by 1973 after a degree in science education from the University of Ibadan, I started an eventful career, teaching science in different locations in Nigeria- rural, urban. I taught general science, integrated science, biology, chemistry and physics in well-resourced as well as poorly-resourced schools. I saw the good, the bad and the ugly of the science teaching and learning environment. I taught secondary school students, preservice and in-service teachers at all levels of teacher preparation- Teachers Grade II, Nigeria Certificate of Education (NCE), Bachelor’s, postgraduate Diploma, Masters and PhD. I saw that different contexts demanded different approaches to delivering science. The motivation for CTCA was building up.

In 1978, I started active research into how students learn science and methods of teaching science that can foster improved performance. Between 1978 and 1980, I worked with Professor Pinchas Tamir, a globally-renowned scholar in Hebrew University, Jerusalem on cognitive preference testing in biology. The line of inquiry was to test the hypothesis that students’ performance in biology was linked with their cognitive preference (different from cognitive style). The Nigerian data which I collected showed that students with questioning and application cognitive preferences performed significantly better on biology tasks when compared with those with principles and recall. In my mind, I was convinced that there was more to students performing well in biology than their cognitive preference orientations. The quest for other explanatory variables continued.

From 1981, the quest for other explanatory variables increased in tempo. With an increase in the membership of my research team, we were able to hike the methodological rigour of our studies and the size of our samples. By 1982, we were able to publish some of the findings of our research in Science Education and from 1984, published many of these studies in other globally-rated science and technology education journals, including unarguably, the No. 1 journal in the field- Journal of Research in Science Teaching. National journals such as the Journal of the Science Teachers Association of Nigeria and Educational Perspectives, also served as outlets for our research efforts.

We did not find it fulfilling to earn spaces for our research activities in national and international journals. Of what use were the findings if they did not find spaces in the hearts and practice of science teachers. From 1981, we embarked on a series of national workshops mainly through the platform of the Science Teachers Association of Nigeria (STAN) where many of the research team members served as national officers. I was President of the Association at some point (mid-1990s). The field testing of our emerging models confirmed that we had a long road to travel to secure a tool that will fit the demands of delivering quality science education in most science classrooms.

The search continues

In spite of the use of some of the tools (methods or approaches) which our studies recorded “statistically significant difference” in favour of the experimental method (compared with the “traditional”), performance of students in school and public examinations in science was not exciting. Like a sinusoidal wave, it was up one year and down the next. We were not in any doubt that the method of teaching was not the only explanatory factor for students’ good or bad performance in science. Indeed, we had a battery of over 100 variables within the input and process clusters. These clusters of variables included those of teachers, students, curriculum, curriculum delivery, facilities, school management, funding and home support.

What our studies (Okebukola, 2017; Okebukola, Shabani, Sambo and RamonYusuf, 2007) and several others (Badwan, Bothara, Latijnhouwers, Smithies, & Sandars, 2018; Bromley, 2018; Thomas, Antony, Haven-Tang, Francis & Fisher, 2017) confirmed is that, of all the clusters of variables, the way the curriculum is delivered (largely the method or approach) accounts for the greatest variance in the scores on performance. A well-taught science lesson has a high chance of stimulating meaningful learning which, in turn, can facilitate improved performance of students (Barak, 2017; Romero, Cazorla & Buzón; 2017). Of course, tucked behind the variable of a well-taught science lesson is a welltrained, well-motivated science teacher; learner-friendly, well-resourced environment; and well-motivated students (Prins, Bulte, & Pilot, 2016).

Our research team was not able to intervene directly in providing resources for quality science teaching in schools such as procuring equipment for science laboratories. It was the responsibility of the owners of the school. We were not able to pay science teachers to motivate them to teach. That was also not our remit. The employers of the teachers should pay! However, what we were able to do was to keep searching for potent tools to enable teachers better deliver the science curriculum.

In our search, we experimented with several tools (teaching methods, strategies or approaches). You may have noticed that in this book (and course), we use teaching method, strategy or approach interchangeable. There are subtle differences among the three but for our purpose, we take the liberty of synonymity.

We found all the methods we experimented with to be, by and large, better than the methods the teachers were using in their day-to-day delivery, often labelled as the “traditional method”. In 1981, we found that the quality of biology teachers’ verbal exposition was potent in stimulating class participation and achievement (see Okebukola and Ogunniyi, 1983). Between 1981 and 1983, we ran a series of national in-service workshops for biology and integrated science teachers on this model.

Another high point of the CTCA history was my appointment in 1985 by the federal government of Nigeria as the national quiz master for the national young scientists’ competition. This gave me a front row view of the strengths and weaknesses of the science education delivery system. We travelled all over the country conducting science quiz and project competitions and using the platform to test some of our strategies in teaching difficult topics in science. We broadcast our competitions on national radio and TV. Informal evaluation of our efforts confirmed that we made some impact in improving the attitude of students to and achievement in science. Today, over 90% of our participants are top-notch scientists in Nigeria and elsewhere in the world.

Impressed by the success of the national young scientists’ competition, by 1989, the Nigerian government elevated the profile of the competition to the Junior Engineers, Technicians and Scientists (JETS) competition. I was appointed the national quiz master and we moved our operation to “the next level”. By 1991, the combination of the national young scientists and JETS competitions had over 4,000 participants from all the states of the federation for the quiz and project segments. Other science and non-science secondary school students who benefitted directly and indirectly from the scheme ran into several millions across the country. By 1992, I took leave of JETS and went into other orbits of winning students for science through other platforms.

It is worth recalling that when Nigeria won the hosting rights for the 10th International Junior Science Olympiad in 2010, the then President of Nigeria, Umar Yar’Adua recalled me from “retirement” to organise the event. To the glory of God, the event was a huge success, attended by about 180 young scientists and science leaders from 41 countries. It has gone down in history as one of the most successful international science Olympiads. The event permitted me to probe the bright minds of young scientists from all over the world to see how they learn and do science. This added to the building blocks of CTCA.

Going back a little bit on the timeline, the journey to CTCA continued in 2001 when I was appointed Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC). I was the executive head of the regulatory body for the Nigerian university system, the most expansive in Africa. From 2001 and 2006 when I was in service, I kept my science hat fully on my head and supported the development of science and technology education in Nigerian universities. Our projects- Best Practices in University Teaching, Virtual Institute for Higher Education Pedagogy (VIHEP), Virtual Institute for Higher Education in Africa (VIHEAF) which was delivered along with UNESCO partners were among several others which provided building blocks for the development of CTCA.

Now to some insights into our studies which culminated in the development of CTCA. Our studies were mainly quasi-experimental. An experiment as viewed by the legendary Campbell & Stanley (1963) is the primary means by which we are able to establish some form of cause-effect relationships between certain events in the environment and the occurrence of particular forms of behaviour. The basic notion is simple: at least two groups of subjects (persons) are treated exactly alike in all ways except one – the experimental treatment. Any differences observed in the behaviour of the two groups of subjects are then attributed to, or said to be caused by, the difference in the specific treatment condition. If the subjects of the study are randomly assigned to experimental and control conditions, you have a “pure” experiment. However, if random assignment is impossible, a quasi-experiment results. In situations where multi-output variables were of interest, we settled for the multivariate analysis of covariance. The covariates were usually pretest scores. Ancova and mancova are highly robust statistical tools to the extent that they are able to withstand violations to some of the assumptions of normality, homogeneity of variance and random assignment. The flow of our studies was usually of the type:

1. Assign groups to experimental and control conditions
2. Pretest on the measures of interest
3. Apply treatment
4. Posttest on the measures of interest
5. Give retention test after weeks of giving the posttest.

In 1983, we decided to explore the potency of cooperative learning made popular by the Johnson brothers (see Okebukola and Ogunniyi 1984; Okebukola, 1984a; 1984b; 1984c; 1985a; 1985b; 1985c). We fired shots at the barriers to meaningful learning of science using the cooperative-learning strategy as our high-velocity bullet. An earlier survey (Okebukola, 1978) and a scan of the literature showed that the laboratories especially of our public schools were ill-equipped and do not afford students opportunities for individual practical work.

What did we find in a typical science laboratory? For biology, a few weather-beaten microscopes, a litter of awful smelling preserved specimens, a few hand lenses, to be used by 200+ senior secondary students, many of whom were compelled by certificate requirements to enrol for biology. Walk into the chemistry laboratory. Few glassware including a handful of burettes and near empty reagent bottles are what you find. Physics? Worse still. At the primary level, the nature corner with a few plant and animal specimens make up the laboratory. In these settings, meaningful learning takes a dive out of the window.

The idea behind the cooperative-learning strategy is to disallow meaningful learning from jumping out of the window in spite of the constraints of facilities. Instead of the science teacher shunning practical work because equipment cannot go round his/her army of students, the few items of equipment can be used optimally by groups (if you like, platoons) of students on cooperativelearning basis. Common sense? Yes! But where is the empirical proof of efficacy? We provided this through a series of experiments which we started in the early 1980s.

The first in the series of studies compared the performance in practical skills, cognitive achievement and attitude achievement and attitude towards biology of 1,047 students in three groups – cooperative, competitive and individualistic. Our results were mixed, some of which ran “against the run of play” in the science education literature but which finally earned publication space in 1983 in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, rated as the No. 1 journal in science education, worldwide. We found that students in the cooperative-learning group performed best of all in cognitive achievement. They also had the greatest positive attitude change. On practical skills, the competitive group emerged superior. Having empirically established the potency of the CP strategy, we decided to dig further within this terrain. Our second and third series of experiments focused on determining which variant of cooperative learning is most predisposing to achievement. We tried the Jigsaw, TGT, and STAD and compared with CP+CM, our emerging model. We found CP+CM to be superior (see Okebukola, 1987).

We rounded up this phase of our work by examining the critical group size and the mix of members within the CP+CM setting. Our findings on the critical group size, that is, how many students should the science teacher allow in a cooperative-learning group for best effect, have remained inconclusive. More work would, therefore, be needed in this area. On the mix of students in the group, we have been able to gather a respectable corpus of evidence from our studies (e.g. Okebukola, 1984; 1985a; 1985b) and from the literature (e.g. Lazarowitz, and Tamir, 1994) that high; average and low ability students in the proportion of 20% :60% and 20% is ideal with a mixed-sex colouration. In sum, our studies converged in suggesting that if meaningful learning of science was the goal in an environment with shortage of equipment and materials, the CP+CM strategy displaying intra-group cooperation with inter-group competition using mixed-ability and mixed-sex groups is potent.

By 1985, our gaze swung to concept mapping and vee diagramming as tools for promoting meaningful learning of science concepts. We worked with the inventors of concept maps (Joseph Novak) and vee diagrams (Jim Wandersee). The Ausubel-Novak-Wandersee research group was excited about our research in Nigeria. For ten years, we had our research boots on the ground in different parts of Nigeria and in other African countries trying out the two tools- concept maps and vee diagrams. We had huge following in this line of inquiry and the rank of our research team swelled. During this period, we extended our research to Australia during a one-year visiting fellowship at the Science and Mathematics Education Centre, Curtin University of Technology, Perth. Some of our outputs, based concept mapping and vee diagramming research agenda can be found in Okebukola, 1990; 1991; 1993.

You may recall that we started with cognitive preference testing and later followed with cooperative learning. In our search for potent hybrids, we decided to combine the two to see how cognitive preference and learning mode (cooperative and competitive) impact on meaningful learning in science (see for example, Okebukola and Jegede, 1988). We then proceeded to research a “threehorse” arrangement- concept mapping, vee diagramming and learning mode. Another “three-horse” arrangement was the combined use of analogies, cooperative learning and concept mapping. These were exciting times as we found statistically significant achievement and attitude gains in several science subjects when these hybrid models were applied (see Okebukola, 1990a; 1990b; 1990c; 1991a; Okebukola and Adeniyi, 1987; Okebukola and Jegede, 1989).

Global recognitions

Several international gold medals and academic fellowships were rewards for the efforts invested in the search for better methods of teaching science and technology. The Fellowship of the Science Association of Nigeria, Science Teachers Association of Nigeria were some of these. The crowning glory was the Fellowship of the International Academy of Education awarded in 1991. A jewel to the crown was the award in 1992 of UNESCO’s oldest prize, the Kalinga Prize for the Popularisation of Science. I was the first African in the 42-year history of the prize to win the award which has several Nobel Prize winners in science as laureates. As if UNESCO had wind that CTCA was in the offing as far back as 1992, I was awarded the UNESCO prize “for contribution to reinforcing the teaching of methodologies for science education”.

Casting anchor at the CTCA port

We realised all through our exploration of tools for the science teacher from 1975 to date, that there is no final “eureka” moment, no end to the search. There have been several eureka moments along our exploration path. The dynamism of school climate, teacher characteristics, student characteristics, technology and other input, process, product and outcome variables demand that the teacher should be equipped with newer tools in the toolkit of curriculum delivery. This dynamism was the propellant for the constantly moving engine of our research machinery.

A 2010 situation analysis of the science teaching-learning environment showed that we underplayed the role of culture, technology and context in our derivation of tools for the science teacher (Okebukola, 2010). In 1990, we had a sniff of the importance of culture and context in science teaching and learning. Our seminal work on ecoculture (a term we coined) and science learning (Okebukola and Jegede, 1990) was a watershed event. This led to a flurry of research activities within this line of inquiry. We scoured literature especially meta-analysis of studies on the impact of culture, technology and context in promoting meaningful learning of science concepts. We situated these issues within our growing body of studies, now spanning a period of 40 years.

After a series of experimentation and scholarly reviews, we had the dawn break on our new tool- CTCA. This was in 2015. Since 2015, we have moved to high gear in studying the impact of CTCA on breaking barriers to meaningful learning of science concepts. By 2019, CTCA was one of the key thrusts of the proposal from Lagos State University for the establishment of the World Bankfunded Africa Centre of Excellence for Innovative and Transformative STEM Education (ACEITSE).

Summary and Conclusion

We took a brief historical tour of the evolution of CTCA. We found several milestones along the way. We conducted studies on several tools for the science teacher including the use of cooperative learning, concept mapping, vee diagramming, use of analogies, use of humour and several combinations of these methods. We found all to largely improve students’ performance in science.

We noted that all the 20th century tools for teaching science are not sufficiently appropriate for teaching science in the 21st century. Society is changing, the learner is changing, the teacher and teaching methods need to adjust to such changes. CTCA is a product of the desire to respond to the ever-changing school climate. On a concluding note, CTCA is expected to be an addition to the numerous tools available to the science teacher. If properly used, emerging evidence points to its efficacy in promoting meaningful learning.