Searching for Excellence in Science Education: The African Experience

Abstract

This paper seeks to enumerate the search for excellence in Science Education, using the African experience
as its focal point. Science education in independent sub-Saharan Africa has been shaped by policies and
practices which owe allegiances to the colonial masters. All these nations strive to achieve scientific and
technological knowledge. There is need to shift from the moribund, dogmatic and unimaginative curricula
to alternatives that have definite and dynamic objectives based on the child as a potential citizen and a
skilled individual. Scientific knowledge has gone through several stages and revolutions from time
immemorial up to these modern times. An understanding of the growth and changing nature of scientific
ideas helps to clarify some of the problems confronting Science education in modern times especially in
Africa. Scientific knowledge has increased both in quantity and in quality, so that old patterns of thought
have been modified in ways that have caused profound changes in people’s views of natural phenomena.
The search for excellence in Science education started with the desire for scientific literacy advocated by the
use of good Science education programmes in Africa. The aim was to ameliorate the unscientific culture
imbibed traditionally. Hence, the paper harped on education in Africa, objectives of education in Africa,
objectives of science education in Africa, emergence of modern science education in Africa, attendant
problems of science education, and the need for relevant agencies to strive for excellence in science
education in Africa.