Abstract:
This study sought to investigate public Junior High school science teachers’ knowledge,
practice and challenges of Differentiated Instruction (DI) in the Akwapem South
Municipality in the Eastern Region of Ghana. Utilising a pragmatic paradigm and a
mixed-methods approach, the research specifically employed a sequential-explanatory
mixed-methods research design. The study implemented both census and purposive
sampling techniques, selecting 35 science teachers through census sampling technique,
while 10 Integrated Science teachers were chosen using purposive sampling. A
questionnaire was administered to a sample of 35 teachers to collect quantitative data
and a sub-sampling purposively 10 teachers were sampled for observation and
interview to collect qualitative. The quantitative data were analysed through descriptive
statistics with the help of the SPSS version 21 and content analysis. The findings
indicated that JHS teachers had low knowledge of DI. Also, the qualitative data
indicated the extent to which teachers implement DI was low, and time constraint limits
the use of DI. The results showed that, teachers showed minimum evidence of
differentiating their lesson in terms of content, process and assessment. The study
recommends that the municipal directorate of the Ghana Education Service of
Ankwapim South Municipality should organise in-service programmes and workshops
on differentiated instructional strategies to give teachers hands-on training on DI as
required by the NTS guidelines.
Description:
thesis in the Department of Basic Education, Faculty of
Educational Studies, submitted to the school of
Graduate Studies, in partial fulfilment
of the requirements for the award of the degree of
Master of Philosophy
(Basic Education)
in the University of Education, Winneba
AUGUST, 2023
