New trends in physics teaching, v.4; The ... - unesdoc - Unesco

Teacher education: a case study
2. A permanent steering committee was to be set up to see that the decisions of the workshop
were implemented.
3. A full-time organizer, preferably Ghanaian, should be appointed to give direction to
curriculum development work.
4. Writing teams were to be organized to produce course materials for schools and colleges.
5. Evaluation teams should be set up for elementary schools, training colleges and secondary
schools. These teams were to make formative evaluations of courses, train teachers on testing,
recommend to WAEC appropriate forms and approaches for training college and ‘0’ level
examinations, develop special evaluation techniques for elementary schools and training colleges,
and investigate selection procedures.
6. The pre-service education of graduate teachers was to be entrusted to the University of
Cape Coast. In-service training with emphasis on content and approach was to be organized and a
team was to design a programme for such courses. This work culminated in the science specialist
courses to be described later.
7. For the Integrated Science at ‘0’ level to be accepted as a qualification for the sixth form
work, the Ministry of Education and WAEC should be committed to sanction ‘0’ level Integrated
Science as a qualification for Advanced (A) level courses.
8. Funds were to be sought for writing and evaluation teams, meetings, training courses for
teachers, publication of drafts and other materials, expenses of the Steering Committee, publicity
among teachers and other concerned groups, and for the salary of full-time personnel.
Since an investigation into the fate of the recommendations is not the purpose of this paper,
it wil suffice to say that few of the recommendations have been implemented; nor has there been
any follow-up to the Takoradi Workshop.
Nevertheless, an important consequence of this Workshop has been an increasing effort by
teachers and curriculum workers to design materials for science teaching. The Project for Science
Integration (PSI) is one such effort. Another outcome of the Workshop was the specialist science
course for teachers started in September 1973. This was a two-year course for experienced
elementary school teachers (Certificate ‘A’ Teachers), training either to teach science in the
elementary schools or to organize the teaching of science in a number of schools. After two years’
operation, this specialist science course was discontinued in favour of a three-year post-secondary
training course.
I have been involved in the training of both the two-year specialist and three-year ‘quasispecialist’
course. Writing as a participant observer, my objective in this paper is to try to portray
the three-year ‘quasi-specialist’ course as it has been, the problems leading to its being phased out,
then to discuss why the two-year and three-year courses have been said to be failures, and finally
attempt to postulate what factors should be kept in mind when teachers have to be trained for a
new educational system, especially in a developing country. But first, it will be necessary to give
an outline of the Ghana education system, and then proceed on to discuss the structure of the
course with its attendant problems.
THE GHANA EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
In Ghana, pre-university education is divided into three cycles, all centrally controlled.
The first cycle is elementary. It comprises six years of primary schooling beginning at 6 years,
255