Abstract

With the likelihood of SARS-CoV-2 perpetuating itself within human population, reform of educational policies becomes imperative in many nations of the world, especially Nigeria where the experience of the COVID-instilled lockdown has revealed that the existing pedagogic practices at post-primary level of education does not provide for circumstances that could, on emergency, prohibit in-person physical classes. In the country, digitalization of education process is thus no more a concept for the future, but an imperative need of the present. Investigated in this study, therefore, is the acceptability by the end-users (teachers and students), of a teaching-learning procedure that blends physical and virtual instructional methods into a pedagogic model for use at secondary school level of education in Nigeria. A 4-item questionnaire was validated and administered to a total of 171 randomly chosen teachers and students, then statistical tools of chi-square, frequency, percentage and mean were used in analyzing their responses. It was obtained that 55.3% of the respondents agrees with having the two instructional approaches blended for use at post-COVID dispensation. Most likely it is, also, that this percentage of acceptability increases should there be improvement in the skills and competences of the end-users of the blend pedagogy, as well as availability of necessary Internet-of-Things facilities, access to quality telecommunication services and provision of stable electricity supply. This study reveals that Nigerian education system is mature to have the upgrading of its instructional process at the level of secondary school programme achieved seamlessly.  

Keywords: Blended instructional method; effectiveness; protective protocols; pedagogic practices; secondary schools; teaching-learning