EARLY CHILDHOOD TEACHERS’ STRATEGIES IN COPING WITH DYNAMICS SOCIETY

Abstract

This study examined early childhood teachers’ strategies in coping with dynamics society in Ogun State, Nigeria. Two research questions guided this study. A descriptive survey research design was used. The population of the study comprised public earlychildhood teachers’ in Ijebu-Ode local government area of Ogun State. A total of sixty (60) public earlychildhood teachers’ were purposively chosen and participated in the study questionnaire administration. Researcher developed questionnaire; tagged: ‘Early Childhood Teachers’ Strategies in Coping with Dynamics Society Questionnaire (ECTSCDSQ)’ with 0.85 as reliability coefficient was used for data collection. Mean and pie-charts were used for analysing and presenting the research questions at .05 significance level. The findings revealed that early childhood teachers’ strategies to certain extent could predict the development of pupils’ creativity in coping with dynamics society. That is, teacher should endeavor to make the curriculum flexible so that they offer children plenty opportunity for creative behavior; they should encourage independent learning, they should provide avenues for self initiated projects and experimentations, they should try to promote creative thinking process in children, they should emphasis on the process of creativity rather than the product, they should support divergent problem solving skills of children, they should adopt to children rather than structuring theirs to fit into children and also they should allow children to explore the environment without undue. It was also indicated that model for ideal behaviour, establishing document rules, avoid punishing the class, encourage initiative, offer praise and use non-verbal communication were among the adopted early childhood teachers’ classroom management strategies in coping with dynamics society. The study recommends that teachers should be given awareness or exposed to in depth knowledge of the skills they require for them to be effective in teaching and learning activities at early childhood educational level during this dynamics society. Nigerian government should make provision in every teacher education programmes for specialization of early child care and education to assist teachers acquire the necessary skills and develop strategies for performance in reaching out to the children.