EXPERIENTIAL EDUCATION IN A PROPOSED EXISTENTIAL TEACHER EDUCATION PHILOSOPHY IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The existing teacher education programme implementation has been traditional and conventional, lacking creativity and innovation. Most of pre-service teachers in Nigeria are not prepared to put into practice current pedagogical and interactive skills that have been theoretically learnt; hence emphasis is on the content delivery, examination and certificate over real learning. Previous studies attempted to clarify some difficult philosophical concepts and issues in education such as; teacher quality, education and pedagogy, teaching and mentoring in Nigerian tertiary institutions with little consideration for experiential education and other learner centred methods. This study therefore explored experiential education as a means of achieving existential teacher education philosophy in Nigeria. Dewey’s philosophy of pragmatism serves as the framework in which knowledge arises from an active participation and adaptation of the human organism to its environment through active manipulation and re-adaptation. And Sartre’s philosophy of existentialism that revolves around the questions of existence and human experience, “existence proceeds essence” that man is nothing but what he makes of himself, man has choice and subjectivity, he chooses what will make him and responsible for his choice. Both pragmatism and existentialism give man freedom to explore his environment and choose what he wants to be his knowledge and value. The study employed philosophical method of speculation and analytical approach to accentuate relevance of Dewey’s experiential education and Sartre’s existentialist philosophy of education. To both Dewey and Sartre, for experiential and existentialist philosophy of education to become efficient theory and pedagogy concrete experience must be combined with reflection. Adding reflective practice allows for personal introspection of challenge and key learning. Experiential and existentialist philosophy of teacher education bring about increased intellectual risk taking, better cognition, and enhanced development of 21st century skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, creativity and innovation. Integration of experiential and existential philosophy of teacher education has much potential benefit as; asking students to do more higher–order thinking, such as questioning, explaining, experimenting, predicting or making connections, asking guiding and probing questions, situating learning outside the classroom and allowing learning to be more inquiry based and reflection into the process. Experiential education in a proposed Existential teacher education philosophy is relevant to improving teacher education programme and teaching service delivery competence. Dewey postulated that experiential education, regardless of the content of the experience; there are a few common streams of activities in which the educators and learners create their own knowledge; Engaging in concrete experience, observation of and reflection on the experience, formation of concepts and generalisations from the experience and the application of new understanding. Based on those tenets of experiential education, curriculum planners and educational administrators’ saddle with the responsibility of preparing pre-service teachers should take a cue from experiential education with a view to making teacher education programme relevant to the child and societal needs. Educators and other educational professionals should be trained and encouraged with various experiential education learning programmes both with field-based and classroom based learning opportunities to produce innovative and creative citizens.