Abstract:
The aim of the study was to examine the preparation of the pre-service Music and
dance teachers in Colleges of education: Ghana. The study examined how effective
the pre-service teacher preparation was in Colleges of Education in some selected
Colleges of Education in Ashanti Region. The study examined the adequacy of the
course content, the areas of the Music and Dance Education curriculum that need
much emphasis and what are overstretched, the instructional materials and
pedagogical strategies that are appropriate for effective learning and teaching of
Music and Dance in the Colleges of Education, find out the special competencies
student-teachers of Music and Dance lack in their preparation, and to explore
interventions that can be adopted to improve Music and Dance programme in
Colleges of Education. The Theoretical Framework has been conferred from the
Ghana National Teacher Education Curriculum Framework (MoE-NCTE, 2017) and
National Teachers Standards (GES, 2016). The researcher used mixed-methods
approach and implemented the descriptive survey strategy. The instruments used were
questionnaires, observation and document analysis. Purposive sampling technique
was used to select sixty-four participants (fifty-two pre-service teachers, seven tutors,
and five principals) in the Colleges. The research tools were field notebook, Infinix
mobile phone, digital camera, video footage and voice recorder. The study revealed
some of the following findings; mandatory Music content in the second semester of
the first year (PRA 121) and the principles and methods of teaching the performing
arts 1 (PRA 221) and (PRA 211) as elective for second year first and second
semesters, the reduction of the workload on the pre-service teachers’ (from a total of
89hours to 65hours) in the 2014 DBE, reduction of the duration of teaching practice
by one semester, unavailability of some instructional materials and facilities, not
visiting of places relevant to Music and Dance, inappropriate use of assessment
strategy for learning and teaching and inadequate melodic and harmony compositional
technique. The study concluded that there was inadequate content knowledge,
pedagogy knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge in the pre-service Music
teacher preparation. The study recommends that the methodology aspect of the course
should be made core but not optional in the second year. There should be formidable
content knowledge with respect to the totality of what is to be taught to and learnt by
students, the one credit hour should be increased to two credit hours to enable the
tutors positioning themselves very well for both theory and practical work. There
should be availability of instructional materials and facilities and use in the classroom,
tutors should provide links with the contemporary classroom environment in
various ways that do not require recent personal teaching experience, tutors should
use variety of assessment techniques to determine understanding. Again, the study
recommends that composition lessons should take as its the traditional view that one
learns to compose by imitation.
Description:
A thesis in the Department of Music Education, School of Creative Arts, submitted to the School of Graduate Studies, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Arts and Culture) in the University of Education, Winneba
SEPTEMBER, 2019