An Evaluative Study of a Distance Teacher Education Program in a University in Ghana

Abstract

The study used an adaptation of Provus' discrepancy evaluation model to evaluate a distance teacher education program in the University of Cape Coast, the premier teacher education institution in Ghana. The study involved comparing performance data of the program as perceived by students and faculty/administrators to standards prepared from the program's design. Performance data was obtained by administering two survey instruments to a random sample of students and faculty/administrators. Discrepancies between performance and standards were reported. The study concluded that although there were some discrepancies between program standards and performance the program is fulfilling its purpose of upgrading the professional and academic performance of a large number of teachers in the public K-8 schools in Ghana. Distance Teacher Education at the University of Cape Coast, GhanaDistance education (DE) as a complementary mode of delivery was initiated as an effort to overcome the challenges of access, equity, cost-effectiveness, and quality for higher education (Association for the Development of Education in Africa [ADEA], 2002;Perraton, 2000). The suitability of DE for teacher preparation in particular is a topic of interest in many countries (Perraton, Creed, & Robinson, 2002;Shachar & Neumann, 2003).Ghana, like other industrialized and developing countries, relies on DE to augment traditional face-to-face methods of teacher education (Perraton, Robinson, & Creed, 2007). Teacher preparation is well established in the country with 40 Colleges of Education that offer three-year postsecondary certificate "A" diplomas for teachers of basic education. Total annual matriculation of teachers from these institutions has been between 5,500 and 6,000 since 1995 (Akyeampong, Furlong, & Lewin, 2000). However, there is an acute shortage of trained teachers, created by an expansion of pre-tertiary enrollments due to rapid population growth, the success of basic education reform, and the inability of Colleges of Education to produce the required number of teachers because of inadequate infrastructure.This shortage is not limited to Ghana but is prevalent in all countries of sub-Saharan Africa (DeJaeghere, Chapman, & Mulkeen, 2004). An Evaluative Study of a Distance Teacher Education Program in a University in Ghana Sampong 2A study done in 2000 reported that to train all untrained teachers in Ghana by the year 2005 and to achieve a gross enrollment ratio of a hundred percent by the year 2010, the total number of new teachers required per annum would be from 13,000 to 16,000, and this output would have to be sustained up to the year 2010. Considering the current total annual output of trained teachers, meeting the demand for new teachers is a daunting task (Akyeampong et al., 2000;Akyeampong, 2001).To overcome the shortage of trained teachers, education policy makers decided to employ the mass-production potential of distance education, identified by Peters (1971) nearly 40 years ago. DE is therefore used for in-service t...

A Critical Look at a Blended English Language Teacher Education Program with an Emphasis on the Practicum

“…Because the value of the teaching practice experience in the cooperating schools seems to depend on the quality of the cooperating teachers, organizers of the blended English language teacher education program should pay more attention to the selection of cooperating teachers. Along the same lines, Sampong (2007) claims that distance pre-service teacher education is executed efficiently when the practicum component is planned properly and is well supervised by qualified master teachers. Therefore, cooperating teachers should be selected based on specific criteria.…”

Evaluation of the Vocational Education Orientation Programme (VEOP) at a university in South Africa

“…Coates, 2009;Mishra et al, 2009;Sampong, 2009;Sampson, 2003;Taylor-Powell & Renner, 2000). The questions in the second survey were also based on the learning outcomes of the programme, as well as the principles that guide the programme (cf.…”

“…Table 1 provides the layout of the modules. (Perraton, 2007), Turkey (Gültekin, 2009), India (Mishra, Vijayshri, & Garg, 2009), the United Kingdom (Sampong, 2009;Wilson, 2008), and Australia (Sampong, 2009).…”

Between Strategy and Sabotage: A Faux Pas, Technophobia, or Ghanaian Thing?

“…The critical issue of GT-led policy implementation was not addressed, a gap that this research seeks to bridge. In the specific case of distance education programs in Ghana, evaluative studies have been carried out involving the leading two programs [53], a multi-case study of four public universityoperated programs [5], and a teacher education program [13]. In essence, findings of these studies suggested that implementation of distance education strategies was severely hampered.…”

“…Although indigenous strategy implementers have often attributed such failures to inadequate allocation of resources [6], similar projects managed by non-Ghanaians, with similar funding arrangements and terms of reference, are often devoid of these shortcomings [7]. This rhetoric suggests that the Ghanaian worker probably executes strategies other than those specified in organizational roadmapsa faux pas that is often interestingly justified as a Ghanaian Thing (GT) [8], or unproductive but celebrated workplace practices, including "organizational inertia" [9], dumsorization [10], deliberate resistance to change [11], ineffective communication [12], lack of evaluation and control mechanisms [13], and corruption [14. This paper interrogates these workplace practices in order not only to provide insight into the ubiquitous incidence of implementation setbacks in Ghana's public sector organizations, but also help create pathways for overcoming the menace. Specifically, the study sought to understand the operations of GT networks, using the nation's Distance Education Program (DEP) as a case study.…”