1.1 Introduction
Early childhood education is the term commonly used to describe the formal teaching and care of young children by people other than their family or in settings outside of the home. According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) the developmental definition of early childhood education, spans the human life from birth to age eight. However, typically early childhood education covers the period from birth to when a child starts school and this can be as early as five years of age. Early childhood development and education is the overall development of the child socially, physically and intellectually. It encompasses the care, development and education of children below the age of six years Maduewesi, in Osakwe (2009).
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Research hypothesis and questions, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of Study
Early childhood education involvement according to Barnard (2001) positively affects home and school participation in education at the long run. A child who fails to acquire early education may suffer emotionally, socially, intellectually and even physically if he or she is trusted into the primary school without a sustainable early childhood education involvement that will give him a solid foundation in the primary school. Infact, for the effective and efficient unfolding and development of a child’s latent abilities, attitudes and other forms of behaviour of positive values in the society in which he lives, early childhood education becomes very imminent. This is of utmost importance because researches on early childhood education have shown that early childhood education involvement have great impact on every facet of a child’s development and had suggested that the first teacher is an extremely important person in the child’s life, hence he becomes a role- model to the child.
Anderson (2002) is of the view that when children are exposed to early childhood education, they develop superior communication skills, necessary physical ability and social unity needed in adult life and an increased cognitive and effective educational balance. Researchers in the field and early childhood educators both view the parents as an integral part of the early childhood process. Early childhood education takes many forms depending on the beliefs of the educator or parent. In today’s world, parents and families contribute as much as teachers, students and administrators to the educational process or even more. More than any other time in history, involving community players represents a high priority of most school settings. The measured and researched positive effect of parent involvement on student academic achievement pushes this area into focus of most school district and early childhood programme goals.
Nwagbara (2000) is of the opinion that the vocabulary acquisition during early childhood spans from 12 months with an average number of 3 words to 72 months with an average number of 2562 (two thousand, five hundred and sixty two) words. So, children to speak without any deliberate instruction needed to read or write. Much of what they say, have their own rules and often not the same as in adult and speech. Research in this area supports the theory that children do not acquire grammar through practice or imitation like adults do. They have their own rules of grammar. For example, “it does not run”, becomes “not run”. This conforms to their idea of negative statement or sentence. Even when adults give past tense of eat as ate, children will add ‘ed’ to it saying ‘eated’ and stick to it.
Therefore, in Jos North LGA of Plateau State where the research was carried out, the activities that was conducted is to know the Availability of Early Childhood Education Facilities in Primary Schools.
1.3 Statement of Problems
Investigation revealed that most children these days do not develop cognitively due to lack of early childhood education which is mainly given to children firstly by their parents and secondly by their teachers who are also regarded as surrogate parents in the school. Majority of pupils in primary one in the Nigerian school system, did not pass through the pre-primary schools where children are taught basically through the methods befitting to the children’s learnability and comprehension in the early stage of life. Because of this lapse, most children in the primary schools fail to grasp the content of their lessons due to the fact that they started their early education from the stem instead of from the root.
Also, most of the teachers who are employed to teach at the primary one schools, do not apply the correct teaching methods that are comprehensible to the child, hence most children do not have high academic achievement in the early stages of their primary school education. Due to low cognitive development of the children, there has been poor academic performance virtually at all stages of our educational system. This is because what a child could not achieve during the early education, will be difficult for him/her to achieve at the apex stage of his/her educational life.
1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study
The aim of the study is to scrutinize the Availability of Early Childhood Education Facilities in Primary Schools. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:
- To examine whether there is relationship between early childhood education facilities and speech development among children in schools.
- To investigate whether there is a difference between early childhood education facilities and speech development among children in schools.
- To differentiate between the speech development of children who were taught by their parents and those who were taught by teachers using early childhood education facilities in Primary Schools.
- To investigate whether there is general difference in the speech development of children who had Early Childhood education and those who did not.
1.5 Research Questions
The study came up with research questions so as to be able to ascertain the above stated objectives. The specific research questions for the study are stated below as follows:
- Is there any relationship between early childhood education and speech development among children in primary schools?
- To what extent can there be any difference between early childhood education and speech development among children in primary schools?
- How can we differentiate between the speech development of children who were taught by their parents and those who were taught by their teachers using early childhood education facilities in Primary Schools?
- How can we investigate whether there is general difference in the speech development of children who had pre-primary education and those who did not?
1.6 Research Hypothesis
In order to pursue the objective of this study, the following generalized statements have been designed to guide and aids in obtaining the result for the experiment to be conducted. For this work, the null hypothesis will be represented with H0 while the alternative hypothesis will be represented with hypothesis H1.
Hypothesis One
- H0: There will be no significant relationship between early childhood education and speech development among children in primary schools.
- H1: There will be a significant relationship between early childhood education and speech development among children in primary schools.
Hypothesis Two
- H0: There will be no significant difference between early childhood education and children’s school achievement in primary schools.
- H1: There will be a significant difference between early childhood education and children’s school achievement in primary schools.
Hypothesis Three
- H0: There will be no significant difference between the speech development of children who were taught by their parents and those who were taught by teachers using early childhood education facilities in Primary Schools.
- H1: There will be a significant difference between the speech development of children who were taught by their parents and those who were taught by teachers using early childhood education facilities in Primary Schools.
Hypothesis Four
- H0: There will be no significant gender difference in the speech development of children due to early childhood education.
- H1: There will be a significant gender difference in the speech development of children due to early childhood education.
1.7 Significance of Study
The study will be of great benefit to the following individuals:
- Children will benefit from the findings and recommendations of this study because it will help their teachers and parents to be in good positions to help in teaching or instructing them on the appropriate language to be learned in their communities.
- With the recommendation of this study, teachers would be exposed to know how best to go about teaching or handling children at the lower level of our school system, the primary school. Not only that, they would be exposed to the appropriate methods to be used in teaching language to the child in school, especially at the primary school system.
- Parents would have a better insight on the essence of teaching the child to gain mastery of the language of his/her environment. Most parents do not know that they are the first teachers of the child at home. This study will expose them to the knowledge that they should be the first people to impart knowledge to the child, especially concerning children’s language development. With this study and its recommendations, parents would be able to know the best techniques to be always used in teaching language to the children.
- The society will be exposed to the proper knowledge of language acquisition to the child in the society. With the recommendations, the society will be able to know how best to assist the child in the area of acquisition and mastery of language.
1.8 Scope of Study
The scope of the research focuses on the Availability of Early Childhood Education Facilities in Primary Schools. The study will cover only some selected primary schools in Warri-South Local Government Area, Delta State.
1.9 Limitations of the Study
During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:
- Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
- Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
- Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
- Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet, questionnaire and interview).
1.10 Definition of Terms
Pre-primary: Pre-primary education as defined by Omozeghian (1995) is the education meant for children between the ages of 3 to 6 years.
Early childhood education: It is the term commonly used to describe the formal teaching and care of young children by people other than their family or in settings outside of the home.
