Centering Educational Reforms on Teaching & Curriculum

Educational reform initiatives by both Kufuor and Rawlings administrations focussed on the length of schooling at the elementary and secondary levels. President Kufuor’s Committee on Review of Education Reforms recommended that the duration of senior secondary school (SSS) should be increased from three years to four years and its name changed to senior high school. Perhaps this is a direct response to the widespread belief that the extant three-year senior secondary education is grossly insufficient for preparing students for post-secondary programs and the world of work.

Proponents of the four-year senior secondary school argue that most students complete the SSS without having acquired English proficiency necessary for post-secondary education. This group is quick to give a litany of errors in grammar, style, paragraphing, punctuation, and mechanics that SSS graduates make in writing English prose. Members of this group also believe that since English language—the medium of teaching and learning in Ghana’s schools--- is a second language to almost all the students, they require more than three years to enable them acquire an effective command of it. This argument has a strong emotional appeal to liberal-minded Ghanaians but its force wanes when we look at it critically. Such argument is based on a simple, uncritical assumption that one additional year of schooling would automatically help the SSS system to produce quality graduates. The empirical evidence often used to support that argument is that the old system of seven years of secondary education (five years for O’level and two years for A’level) prepared students more effectively to excel in post-secondary programs than the current system of six years of secondary schooling. Hence, it is strongly believed that seven years of secondary education (3 years JSS and 4 years SSS), will produce better outcomes for students. Nevertheless, three weaknesses bedevil that argument. First, it assumes without any overwhelming theoretical or empirical evidence that the previous model is superior to the current model based solely on duration differences. But both models-- the old model of seven years of secondary schooling and the current system of six years --- suffer from the same weaknesses, including poor pedagogy, irrelevant curriculum, and ineffective headmastership. These are the most important aspects of secondary schooling that need immediate reforms rather than duration of schooling.

Educational administration at the secondary school level continues to suffer from a serious ineffectiveness. Headmasters are still appointed solely on the basis of seniority rather than merit or dedication to student learning. And headmasters are also transferred forcibly by the central authorities in the Ghana Education Service, regardless of one’s commitment to excellence in student learning and without stakeholder input into the decision. The positional roles of the headmasters are thus determined by the central authorities, with an emphasis accorded administrative-managerial functions and relatively little attention given to instructional tasks, student achievements, and professional development of teachers. Normally, these administrative-managerial functions consist of maintaining discipline, ordering equipment, determining staffing needs, allocating staff, scheduling activities, managing school finances, and keeping accurate records. In fact, these functions of headmasters have made them autocratic leaders, who disrespect parents, alumni, and other stakeholders with impunity. Yet the governance system of secondary school and the headmastership, both of which affect learning culture in schools, have never been assigned to a committee for study.

My professional experience and the empirical studies I have undertaken indicate that, a democratic governance structure at the secondary school level in Ghana would contribute immensely to school effectiveness and improvement. This is because headmasters would be compelled to share power, concentrate more on the core mission of schools, make school operations more transparent, check corruption and misappropriation of school assets, and allow stakeholders (including alumni) to participate in making critical decisions. As well, with a democratic governance structure at the secondary school, alumni and other stakeholders could assist in mobilizing critical learning resources to supplement the meagre allocations from government sources. This would also eliminate the disparity in resources across secondary schools in Ghana, as the democratic governance organ of each secondary school could tape into private sources of funding in either Ghana or abroad in order to enhance learning in those schools. Given those facts, it is accurate to describe the headmastership in Ghana under both models of secondary schooling as another public service position characterized with bureaucratic bottlenecks, solo dictatorship, and parochial personal interests, not as a means to improve student learning necessary for the development of the nation’s human resources. Conceptually, the core functions of secondary school organization are teaching and learning. For that reason, the fundamental role of the headmaster is chief learning officer (CLO), not chief administrative officer (CAO). These two functions are never synonymous and a greater stress on the instructional leadership function is a sine qua non to developing a strong learning culture in secondary schools in Ghana. Though president Kufuor’s Education Reform Review Committee recommended that headmasters should be given training in school management and administration, it is my fervent hope that instructional leadership will receive an utmost emphasis in any professional development programs the government design for headmasters. Needless to say, as much as secondary schools must be run efficiently in their use of resources of money, personnel, machinery, equipment, and buildings, they are not business organizations that warrant mimicry of business concepts, ethos, or ideologies.

Second, student knowledge abilities, dispositions, and skills increase or improve depending on the quality of instructional methods, the availability of learning facilities and materials, and school culture that promotes excellence in learning rather than the duration of schooling. From my professional observations, a high quality instruction in SSS should take students not more than two and half years to prepare effectively for their final exit examinations. On the other hand, with a poor quality instruction even five years of SSS would not be enough for students to acquire all the necessary knowledge and skills to pass their exit examinations, let alone prepare for post-secondary learning. So it is very important that the government, as the main provider of public education, concentrates its reform efforts on how to improve teachers’ instructional knowledge through professional development programs and the establishment of professional learning communities in schools. As well, learning facilities should be made available in every secondary school in the country. These include but not limited to library resources, access to computer technology, relevant textbooks and materials. The availability of these resources combined with effective educational leadership is more likely to lead to significant improvements in secondary education and effective preparation of students for the world of work and post-secondary studies than merely increasing the duration of schooling.

The third weakness in the durationist argument is that it ignores curriculum reforms. The official senior secondary school curriculum that mandates what teachers should teach has great influence on the quality of skills, knowledge, and abilities that secondary graduates possess. However, an attention to curriculum reform in professional circles in Ghana has historically taken the form of additions to existing subjects, while the core contents of mathematics, science, social studies, and language curriculum have remained pretty much stable for at least the past 45 years. This suggests that curricular reforms are long over due, but any reforms should also be informed by the kind of citizenry we would like to have in Ghana. If we would like to have citizenry who are self-reliant, self-employable, critical, law-abiding, creative, imaginative, and democratic then the curriculum would be accordingly designed to reinforce these values in students. Consequently, official curriculum is not politically neutral; it often reflects the political agenda of the government in power and shared values and worldview of the society at large.

The core curriculum of mathematics, science, social studies, and language need an overhaul in terms of content and coverage in order to put more emphasis on critical and problem-solving knowledge relative to rationalist knowledge. To illustrate, I understand that knowledge about a particular novel or poem and, say, its place and meaning in the historical context of writing, enables students to begin engaging with that writing. As well, in order to engage with a particular concept in science, some understanding of the relevant principles and information is a pre-requisite. However, students cannot tackle intellectual or practical problems that may arise in their lives, families or communities or grow as critical learners if the rationalist knowledge is allowed to become the end-point of learning. Admittedly, the rationalist approach must be the entry point into the learning of any scientific concepts but application, problem-solving and problem-posing must be the purposes of learning. Similarly, writing a prose is not merely a knowledge about grammatical conventions, but also how to search for evidence, how to use the evidence to substantiate arguments, how to ask critical questions, how to challenge commonsensical wisdoms, how to dissect arguments, how to write persuasively, and so on.

Curriculum reforms are also needed to make learning relevant to students’ cultural experiences or lived realities. That is, the curriculum should first and foremost draw referents based on the local rather than on Euro-American world. It is only when learning is well-grounded in the local environment (which includes the physical environment, social, political, and cultural) that relevant linkages could be made to phenomena in other countries. After all, if the African saying that charity begins at home has any ring of truth, then it follows that it is the height of idiocy for students to learn the cultural values and norms of Euro-American world without first studying their own and subjecting their own to various critiques and interrogations. I find it so preposterous, for example, that students of government and politics at the senior secondary school level spend an inordinate amount of their time learning Euro-American systems of governance and ethos when these students know practically nothing about how Ghanaians have been governing themselves before the advent of the Euro-American system of governance. In fact, students’ enthusiasm and creativity would be sharpened if they were introduced to the intricate processes of decision-making in our traditional system of governance--- chieftaincy or eldercracy. That would help to demythologize the concept of democracy and its sister concepts of consensus, consultation, negotiation, and bargaining as Euro-American intellectual construct. It would also make our secondary education a real contributor to our national development efforts.

The need for instructional and curricular reforms in Ghana has been indirectly acknowledged in the past but no significant reforms have been initiated. For instance, the Rawlings regime phased out the 4-year post middle school teacher Training program in 1991 and replaced it with a 3- year post-secondary program. This change is often touted as part of a comprehensive effort to increase teacher knowledge base which, it is believed, will eventually lead to instructional improvements. While it is empirically valid that increasing teacher knowledge-base is a little step toward instructional improvement, it is by itself inadequate for substantial instructional improvements. Rawlings regime also established more than ten Science Resource Centres across the country with the intent to promote scientific education. The Kufuor’s government has as well focused on making computer technology accessible to secondary students. However, none of these initiatives gives attention to instructional reforms as if these resources by themselves could promote learning.

My observation of Ghanaian secondary school classrooms is that teachers continue to use transmission and lecturing methods of teaching, where the teacher does all the talking, asks all the questions, gives all the directions, information, and facts or figures while the students are required to listen attentively and passively. The teacher is not only an embodiment of all the knowledge but also the embodiment of all the power in the classroom. The reason is that she/he alone validates knowledge and determines what discourses are acceptable or unacceptable in the classroom. As a matter of fact, so many things could go wrong in such authoritative classrooms. For example, if the teacher makes a mistake, everybody makes the same mistake! Besides, if the teacher forgets to explain something, everybody also forgets to ask for explanation. Moreover, the teacher teaches what is comfortable or convenient to her/him, not what triggers students’ intellectual curiosity. Consequently, the teacher is a petty dictatorial politician in the classroom, with unlimited powers to pontificate, while the students live in a constant fear of disapproval of their knowledge. Teacher dictatorship in classrooms prevalent in Ghana stifles student creativity, intellectual curiosity, and makes students prisoners of their own ideas or intellectual struggles. This observation is not to suggest that the teacher and student must have an equal political authority in the classroom, but the classroom as a community of learners presupposes that students should have some latitude to share their narratives without fear or intimidation. In the same way, students as individuals, small or large groups should have the freedom to ask questions, to point out contradictions, to dissect arguments, to make reference to their local knowledge, and to conduct inquiries.

Indeed, substantial instructional improvement occurs when teachers use delivery strategies and practices that are in sync with student learning styles and profiles. In order words, improved instructional methods are the professional teaching standards that represent the profession’s consensus on the critical aspects of the arts and science of teaching. These standards are cast in terms of actions that teachers must take to advance student learning outcomes and the essential pedagogical knowledge, skills, dispositions, and commitments that teachers need in order to practice at a high-level. That said, it should be borne in mind that standards of teaching practice and methodology are established based on empirical studies, practices of accomplished teachers in various fields, and best practices stemming from “success stories”. In some jurisdictions, the standards of teaching practice and methodology are compiled in a book with tiles such as “Handbook for Teaching’, “Handbook for Teaching Practice”, “Standards of Best Practices” or “Instructional Practice Refresher”. The book may also be used for professional development of teachers, for preparing teachers in teacher colleges, evaluating teacher performance and inspection of schools.

Any realistic reform of Ghana’s secondary education system requires a comprehensive reform of instructional practices and curriculum rather than extending the duration of schooling or changing the generic name of senior secondary schools (SSS) to senior high school(SHS). This name change, which directly mimics American and Canadian high school name, is absolutely superficial and unnecessary; in the sense that it will not improve teaching and learning at that level. But it is characteristic of Ghanaian elite mentality that falsely believes that things change when their names are changed. It is a false consciousness at its highest apogee! Instead reform efforts must be focussed on how to improve teaching, learning and curriculum at the secondary level. Improving teaching and learning also requires reforming the national curricula. In fact, both elementary and JSS (Junior Secondary School) curricula and instructional practices also require reform, since the skills, knowledge and abilities that students bring with them from these levels of schooling significantly affect their performance at the senior secondary level. I keep my fingers across, waiting with a keen intellectual interest for the present or next government to initiate real reforms of secondary education in Ghana, devoid of the superficiality and hollowness of the past.