Since the official launch of the Green Teacher Nigeria (GTN) one year ago, enrollment in this programme offered by the National Teachers’ Institute (NTI) Kaduna has surpassed 11,000. These teachers will complete their courses having gained knowledge in environmental education as part of their training.

“COL’s assistance has been instrumental in enabling the institute to deliver on its mandate of training and retraining of teachers for optimal performance,” said Mr Mallam Bashir Mamman, NTI’s Examination Department Director.

Mr Mamman spoke at the recent workshop, which had brought together 65 teacher educators and NTI zonal coordinators and focussed on problem-based learning (PBL) and online assessment. It provided participants with the opportunity to reflect upon, discuss and connect their subject content to the commonly experienced environmental problems in Nigeria, using a PBL approach.

COL has supported NTI in capacity building on pedagogies and technologies for effective delivery of this environmental education programme. The content has now been integrated into Nigeria’s National Certificate of Education (NCE) 1 and 2, as part of the General Education Studies curriculum.

COL’s Adviser: Teacher Education Dr Betty Ogange, said, “To be able to increase the environmental awareness of learners, it is important that educators have an understanding of the pedagogies aimed at solving real life problems.”

Along with capacity- and skills-building workshops, COL has also provided support in designing open educational resources (OER) and an on-going review of the programme content.