Social Interactionist Approach: A Learner Centered Strategy for Functional Education and National Development

Abstract

The history of education is characterized by successive innovations that are aimed at implementation of higher quality for full potentiality. To prepare the learner for further education and long life learning, there has to be a shift from the traditional teaching and learning approach to modern educational technique. Such techniques center on social efficiency and advancement that aim at empowering learner for societal development. Functional and quality education is the bedrock of development in any nation. With various ethnic groups distributed across different religious beliefs in Africa and the entire world at large, there is need for the use of effective teaching and learning strategy such as social integrationist approach. The strategy is effective at enhancing students’ knowledge of national unity for development. This study therefore, determined the effective teaching of concepts using social integrationist approach. The pretest-posttest, control group quasi experimental design was adopted. Participants were one hundred and fifty junior secondary 111 students purposively selected from four secondary schools in Ogun State, Nigeria. One research question was raised and two null hypotheses were formulated and tested at p<0.05 level of significance. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, of frequency count, percentage, mean and standard deviation. Inferential statistics of Pearson product moment correlation was used to test the hypotheses. This paper therefore, brings to light the fact that social integrationist approach is an effective teaching and learning strategy which could help promote national development using functional educational strategy as a tool.