Cookey, P.E.; Peter-Cookey, M.A.; Richard, I.U.; Brdanovic, D. Multi-Level Perceptions on Higher Education Development for Sanitation and Hygiene Management in Nigeria. Hygiene2023, 3, 465-491.
Cookey, P.E.; Peter-Cookey, M.A.; Richard, I.U.; Brdanovic, D. Multi-Level Perceptions on Higher Education Development for Sanitation and Hygiene Management in Nigeria. Hygiene 2023, 3, 465-491.
Cookey, P.E.; Peter-Cookey, M.A.; Richard, I.U.; Brdanovic, D. Multi-Level Perceptions on Higher Education Development for Sanitation and Hygiene Management in Nigeria. Hygiene2023, 3, 465-491.
Cookey, P.E.; Peter-Cookey, M.A.; Richard, I.U.; Brdanovic, D. Multi-Level Perceptions on Higher Education Development for Sanitation and Hygiene Management in Nigeria. Hygiene 2023, 3, 465-491.
Abstract
Providing safely-managed sanitation/hygiene requires key competencies for education, training, service delivery, enterprise development and management, product and infrastructure design and development, construction and installation, governance, financing, research, etc. These strategic sanitation capacities will have to be built from higher education’s academic and professional programmes structured and designed to produce skilled and knowledgeable professionals and practitioners. This study aims to investigate the quality of the sanitation/hygiene management content of Environmental Health programmes; the adequacy of the existing central curricula; and the perception of environmental health sanitation/hygiene-trained professionals to determine the next phase for building knowledge and capacity of sanitation professionals in Nigeria through higher education institutions. A multilevel mixed method concurrent study was used for sampling and data collection with a multilevel perception analysis to examine the perceptions of students, lecturers and graduate alumni as well as employers/supervisors and clients/service-users of sanitation/hygiene related graduates. The main findings of this paper show limited understanding of the concepts of contemporary issues of sanitation/hygiene management; the central/national teaching and curricula were found to be seriously out of date; and clients/service-users were dissatisfied with the skills and knowledge levels of the graduates. The study concludes by recommending a national sanitation management higher education pathway to guide the provision of integrated sanitation/hygiene management education at higher education institutions (HEIs), to build effective, efficient, competent, and sufficient workforce for the country.
Keywords
Skills; Knowledge and Competency; Multi-Level Perception; Sanitation/Hygiene Management; Higher Education Institutions; Environmental Health Technician/Technology
Subject
Public Health and Healthcare, Public, Environmental and Occupational Health
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
