A Brief History of the Faculty of Education

Faculty of Education, University of Ibadan

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	A Brief History of the Faculty of Education.
	The Faculty of Education came into being in 1962 when the Institute of Education (founded in 1957) and the Department of Extra-Mural Studies (founded in 1949) were merged together under the name ‘Faculty of Education and Extra-Mural Studies’ with Professor A. Taylor as the first Dean of the Faculty. It occupied part of the Faculty of Arts building until 1967 when the Faculty moved to its present location. The institute of Education introduced the Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) degree in 1962 and redesignated the Department and Institute of Education the same year. In September 1964, the Department of Extra-mural Studies became the Department of Adult Education when the two-year Diploma in Adult Education and Community Development was introduced.

	The Department of Library Studies began in 1960 as the institute of Librarianship with the declared aim of training African Librarians and investigating problems of Librarianship with special reference to Africa. It became fully integrated into the Faculty in 1965 and moved with the two foundation Department to its present site in 1967. In the 1974/75 session, the Faculty made a case for the creation of more Departments of cater for new areas of education that were becoming important and prominent in the modern world. As a result, the Department of Physical and Health Education came into being in the 1975/76 session. A fresh case was made in the beginning from the 1976/77 session. These are:
	The Department of Educational management;
	The Department of Guidance and Counselling; and
	The Department of Special Education (that is education of handicapped and exceptional children).

	Simultaneously with the creation of these new Department, the Department of Education was redesignated the Department of Teacher Education. At present, the faculty has seven academic departments, the institute of Education, the Africa Regional Centre for information Science and the Abadina Media Resource Centre

	Objectives
	The objectives of the Faculty derive from the objectives of the university. In this connection, the national Curriculum Conference of 1969 identified the following specific objectives:
		Take part in the process of national development through the basic faculties of the university;
		Develop and transmit the national heritage and blend this with our larger world heritage;
		Provide intellectual life sustained by an intellectual community;
		Develop national consciousness and loyalty to truth and academic honesty;
		Provoke and promote an enlightened and informed public opinion;
		Re-establish old and new values worthy of sustaining the nation;
		Coordinate national research under its umbrella;
		Become a catalyst for change;
		Engender a spirit of national and community service;
		Develop and encourage Nigerian human resource talents to the full;
		Encourage and develop critical and analytical attitudes;
		Create an atmosphere for love of learning and the use of knowledge;
		Foster international relations through scholarship;
		Pursue the goal of free inquiry after truth;
		Disseminate the knowledge for the use of humanity.


	Special Objectives of Faculty of Education
	Within the global objectives of Nigerian Universities, the Faculty of Education, University
	of Ibadan did identify the following specific objectives.
		Training of high level manpower for formal and non-formal educational programmes, at
		the following levels:
	University secondary schools vocational training institutions teacher training institutions pre-primary and primary schools basic literacy
		Researching into educational problems in the country with a view to providing empirical
		information.
		Communicating educational research information to government and the public at large.
		Rendering educational services to Ministries of Education and other educational
		institutions.
	The various departments within the Faculty carry out these functions for various areas of education.

	Programmes
	A summary of the various programmes and services provided by the Departments/units
	in the Faculty is provided in the following Table:

	Achievements
	The Faculty of Education through its departmental programmes has achieved a lot since its inception. These achievements can be categorized into the following six areas. Production of high level teaching manpower; Provision of in-service training to education and education related personnel; Provision of extra-mural services to early school leavers and workers; Provision of educational services to educational Institutions ands Ministries and The conduct and reporting and educational research to Governments and the public. Provision of outreach services to the larger society. Such programmes include Distance Education, Part Time Programme, Short term training, rural literacy, classes and collaborative research with the rural people etc.

	High Level Manpower
	Some of the departments of the Faculty have increased their enrolment in the Certificate, Diploma, B.Ed. and Postgraduate levels during the past decade with the aim of satisfying one of the objectives of the Faculty and the nation, that is, the production of well-qualified teaching manpower. For instance, the oldest department in the Faculty, that is the Department of Adult Education has produced thousands of the holders of the Certificate in Trade Unionism and industrial Relations, Diploma in Adult Education and Community Development, First Degree graduates, holders of the Masters and Doctorate degrees to date. Similarly, the Department of Educational management has produced a substantial number of Educational Planners and Administrators to date. Again the Department of Teacher Education has produced academic members of staff for most Colleges of Education and faculties of education nationwide. Such increased manpower output is noticeable in all the other departments during the period under review.

	In-Service Training
	Like the pre-service regular programmes in the faculty, the various departments units of the Faculty run in-service training programmes for Ministries of Education officials as well as staff of other educational Institutions in the country. In some cases, educationists from other African countries are catered for through our in-service training programmes. The submissions made by the various departments shoe that a lot of in-services programmes through workshops, seminars, conferences, and short duration courses have been held in the Faculty during the past decades. The Faculty through its in-service programme has come to discover that it has a major role to play in the up-grading of their knowledge if the quality of educational activities provided in this country is to improve. It is in this regard that all the departments/units of the Faculty endeavour to run at least one in-service programme each year.

	The Extra-mural Programmes of Adult Education Department
	Many young Nigerians in the past did not have the opportunity of achieving their educational aims because of lack of opportunities. Fortunately, the Extra-mural programme of the Department of Adult Education has been able to satisfy the innate desires of many young Nigerians especially in the Southern States in that they have been able to pass their GCE ‘O’ Level examinations ands thereafter proceed to the Universities while working at the same time. Several thousands of Nigerians have benefited from these programmes which have become very popular in recent times and are expected to continue to be popular for a long time to come.

	Provision of Educational Services
	The Faculty’s Africa Regional Centre for Information Science (ARCIS) and the Abadina Media Resources Centre serve as Research and Educational services centres respectively. These centres have provided a lot of educational services to Ministries of Education and Educational Institutions over the past decade.

	Educational Research
	One of the functions of Universities is the conduct of research and the dissemination of information obtained from such researches. The Faculty of Education has been in the fore-front in the pursuit of this objective. Many Lecturers have been encouraged in the past through their own personal into Educational problems in the society. In order to make such research findings available to Ministries’ officials and the public at large, journals were set up in the Faculty. At. The moment there are several research journals in the Faculty of which the West African Journal of Education, the African Journal of Educational Research, Careers and the African Education, the African Journal of Education, the African Journal of Educational Research, Careers and the African Journal of Educational management are a few. Furthermore, the Institute of Education has an occasional publication series where special research reports are published. For sometime now the Institute of Education and the Faculty of Education have started the Guest Lecturers, the Faculty and inaugural Lecture series.

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	© 2002 Department of Adult Education, University of Ibadan, Nigeria.