Government commitments and teaching strategies for effective quality early childhood education in South Western Nigeria

This study assessed government commitment in fulfilling its obligations in ensuring quality early childhood education (ECE) as outlined in the National Policy on Education; examined the teaching strategies that teachers employed to ensure appropriate teaching and learning process; and assessed the challenges associated to teaching strategies used by teachers. A descriptive survey design was used. The population consisted of all ECE teachers and proprietors/proprietress. The sample comprised 150 teachers and 30 proprietors/proprietress of both public and private primary schools selected from two southwestern states of Nigeria using simple random sampling technique based on the availability of ECE class(es) in the study area. An instrument entitled "Government Commitment and Teaching Strategy for Effective Quality Early Childhood Education (GCTSQECE) was validated and used for data collection. The instrument has two sections with section A focusing on the demographic data of the participants while section B focused on governments involvement and teaching strategies employed by ECE teachers in having effective quality early childhood education. The instrument was validated using internal consistency while the Cronbach alpha reliability test coefficient of the GCTSQECE was 0.76. The data collected were analyzed using frequency and simple percentage. Results showed that there are not enough ECE professionals, few ECE departments in the universities, poor remuneration of teachers and that teachers employed the use of appropriate teaching strategies and improvised in most cases. It is therefore recommended that government should promote and support the training of teachers and implement ECE policy in primary schools.