Basic School Teachers’ Knowledge in Fundamental Curriculum Concepts and Curriculum Development Process in Ghana

Abstract

Teachers’ direct involvement in the designing phase of curriculum development process has received massive thumbs up over the years in most countries. However, in Ghana, it is at the implementation phase that the teacher is directly involved. Meanwhile, there is impressive theoretical support for direct teacher-involvement in curriculum development, but educationists in Ghana apparently, do not support the practice of this in our country, and the reaction from teachers is unenthusiastic. Some educationists cite inadequate knowledge of teachers in curriculum matters as the reason for which curriculum development should not be left in the hands of the classroom teacher. Thus, this study was conducted to investigate the basic school teachers’ knowledge in fundamental curriculum concepts and curriculum development process in Ghana. The study is a descriptive survey. A sample size of 297 out of a population of 1,300 teachers from 59 basic schools in the Ga-West Municipality was used. Data were collected using close-ended questionnaire, analysed quantitatively and results presented in percentages, means and standard deviation tables. The study showed that the basic school teachers were not aware of the curriculum development process in Ghana and did not express deeper understanding of curriculum concepts and terminologies required to play a substantial role in curriculum development. The recommendation is that the teacher-training institutions should beef-up the practical training they give to teachers in terms of curriculum theory and practice to effectively function as designers and implementers of the various curricula.

Keywords: Keywords: curriculum design, curriculum development, curriculum implementation

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/10-9-11

Publication date:March 31^st 2019