Process evaluation of the social studies curriculum in colleges of education in the Eastern and Greater Accra regions of Ghana

Abstract

The study focused on the process evaluation of the current Social Studies curriculum of the Colleges of Education in the Eastern and Greater Accra Regions of Ghana. The descriptive survey was used for the study. Purposive sampling was used to select twelve (12) Social Studies tutors, ten (10) subject specialists and four (4) curriculum experts from CRDD and a multi-stage sampling technique was used to sample 480 teacher-trainees for the study. Self-developed questionnaire and semi-structured interview guides were used for data collection. The descriptive statistics was used to analyse the data including means, standard deviations, frequencies and percentages. The results revealed that the majority of the respondents agreed that the objectives of the Social Studies curriculum of the Colleges of Education in Ghana were being achieved. The study also revealed that there was a relationship between the selected content of Social Studies and curriculum objectives. Additionally, the results revealed that most of the tutors used appropriate pedagogical approaches to the effective teaching and learning of Social Studies. Furthermore, the pedagogical content knowledge of Social Studies teachers and teachers’ teaching-learning strategies significantly enhanced the Social Studies instructional process in classroom. It is recommended that Social Studies tutors should try as much as possible to integrate the use of different teaching and learning methods in teaching to improve the quality of instruction given in schools.