International Conference: language education for sustainable development

Osakue Stevenson Omoera, PhD, is Chair in the Department of Theatre and Film Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Federal University Otuoke, Bayelsa State, Nigeria. He teaches and conducts research in the Sociology of the Media, Nollywood Studies, Development Communication, African Theatre Performance and Cultural Communication.

Globally, the premium is placed on the concept of 'play' in early childhood education. This is because play is critical to a child's growth and development. In Nigeria, it is enshrined in the National Policy on Education (NPE) that government authorities are to ensure that the main method of teaching at the pre-primary level is the play-away method. The situation on the ground in many parts of the country appears to be a far cry from this because it is not sustainably innovative enough. It is within this context that this study uses historical-analytic, key person interview (KPI) and direct observation methods to examine sustainability innovation in the framework of education for sustainable development (ESD) in early childhood education in Esanland in Nigeria. It argues that although teachers at the preschool level in Esanland strive to adopt the play methods, they tend to overtax the learning capacities of preschoolers, thereby overgrowing them, with likely negative effects, which affect them in successively higher levels of learning. The study observes that the situation may have arisen from a combination of factors, including inadequacy of trained pre-primary schoolteachers, inadequate facilities, poor teaching and learning environment, weak supervisory and regulatory practices, etc., in the locality. The study suggests a revisiting of the play phenomenon in preschool education in Esanland, using the ESD paradigm of the United Nations' sustainable development goals (SDGs) to emphasize sustainable innovation of compu-video media to create a heartier learning and teaching environment for preschoolers and their teachers, as part of efforts aimed at strengthening early childhood education practice in the area. Deliberate efforts should be geared towards sustainable innovative curricular overhaul, training and retraining of preschool teachers, with massive deployment of video media in teaching and learning activities among preschoolers because children find the audio-visual aesthetics of video media irresistible.