QUALITY TEACHER EDUCATION; AN IMPERATIVE TO HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION

Abstract

Education in Nigeria, and the world over, is usually taken as an instrument per excellence for affecting national transformation and development. Accordingly, the National Policy on Education (FGN 2004), which is government’s way of realizing in parts some of its national goals and aspirations states that no education system will ever rise above the quality of its teachers, and by extension the quality of its human capital. In general, education is a critical component of a country’s human capital as it increases the efficiency of each individual worker and helps economies to move up the value-chain beyond manual tasks in a production process. In spite of the obvious importance of education and teacher quality in our national life, teacher-training institutions have been questioned and criticized for their inability to produce teachers who are properly grounded in pedagogy and content as well as having the ability to collaborate professionally in a working environment. Adeola and Adenikinju (2005) had decried the deteriorating quality of human capital in Nigeria. They however blamed it on very low  accumulated teaching quality which had manifested in the concept “schooling without learning in Nigeria”.  Nigeria, over the years has been experiencing an irregular, unsustainable and negative growth patterns. The reason for these negative growth patterns can be attributed largely to the dependent of the economy on the exploitation and exports of natural capital (wasting assets), rather than the economy being driven by high quality human capital, made possible by high quality teacher education. It is a common place knowledge that human capital development holds the key to sustainable economic growth and transformation through its impact on technological progress and innovation. The purpose of this work is to show the linkage between quality teacher education, human capital development and economic transformation