This article focuses on teacher education in Ghana. It examines a number of reforms involving curricular changes and restructuring of teacher education institutions tasked with the responsibility of preparing teachers for the basic school level. The article highlights the structure and changes in Ghana's teacher development policies and practices following the adoption of a new programme which took effect in 2018 with the intake of the first batch of 4-year degree students in the country's Colleges of Education. We envisage that improved teacher qualification and a conscious effort to link theory to practice will result in improved teacher knowledge and skills required for a professional teacher. Despite this stated enthusiasm, a number of contextual issues which could negatively affect the intended gains from this most current reforms have been discussed. We end with a call on policy makers to address the contextual issues highlighted in this paper and also a need for continuity in teacher education policies in Ghana considering the numerous politically-related reforms.
This study sought to examine the activities that go on in physics classrooms in Senior High Schools in Ghana. Specifically, the study sought to investigate the pattern of interaction and instructional methods used for teaching physics and level of coverage of physics syllabus. The survey design was employed for the study in which questionnaire was used for data collection. Participants for the study were physics teachers and final year physics students. Findings from the study suggest that classroom interaction seemed to be mostly teacher-centered and tended not to support inquiry-based teaching and learning which is noted for promoting conceptual change and enhance performance. It is recommended among other things that physics teachers should be exposed to efficient pedagogies of teaching and presenting information to learners. The traditional way of teaching where teacher decides on what goes on in the classroom has a limited space in the 21 st century science classrooms, particularly physics.
This paper explores New Zealand (NZ) physics teachers' and physics educators' views about Initial Teacher Education (ITE). Perspectives of physics teachers nationally indicated that in general, teachers considered themselves not well-prepared in some content areas including electronics, modern physics, and atomic and nuclear physics. This may be because in NZ, physics teachers have usually gained their content knowledge from an undergraduate science degree where they may have only taken one or two courses in physics. One year postgraduate teacher education programmes do not have sufficient time to cover the physics content taught in the final three years of schooling. The implications for ITE of physics teachers are discussed in terms of the shifts needed to help them to identify the gaps in their content knowledge and to develop their conceptual understanding of physics.
This paper reviews Ghana's performance in the TIMSS 2011 survey in comparison with other African and some high performing countries which participated in the TIMSS assessment. Students' achievement in the science content areas assessed were summarized and teacher preparation constructs of teachers of the students who took part in the assessment explored with the aim of finding any possible linkage between teacher preparation and students achievement. Two set of reviews were done. First, results on the eighth grade (JHS 2) science content achievement in biology, chemistry, physics, and earth science for Ghana, Morocco and Tunisia were compared. The second review compared how Ghana prepares her teachers to Finland and Singapore who were among the first five performing countries on the TIMSS 2011 assessment. Some mismatch was identified in terms of teacher preparation and students' achievement in the case of Ghana. Ghanaian teachers scored relatively high on most of the constructs that were measured by the TIMSS report under teacher preparation but these were not reflected in the students' achievement. In view of this, it is recommended that other indicators such as classroom instruction, resources for teaching science, and school climate are investigated with the aim of finding any other underlying factors that could account for the mismatch between Ghanaian students' achievement on the TIMSS science assessment and teachers' preparation.
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