4 research outputs found
Management of Curriculum Change: A Mechanism for Ensuring Continuous Academic Improvement in Ghanaian Universities
Effective collaboration in the curriculum change effort remains a challenge in higher education, in particular, with comprehensive curriculum reform or change. Curriculum modification to existing courses or content will not always lead to the desired reform even though a collaborative approach has been the foundation of the process. Comprehensive and collaborative curriculum change requires a full examination of how academics conceive their role and how the curriculum itself is defined, analyzed, and changed.Through a systematic review of literature, the researchers were able to create a contextualized emergent model for curriculum change management for Ghanaian universities derived from experience and educational policies.It emerged from the review of literature that a collectively shared guiding vision for an effective curriculum change provided a strong foundation for the comprehensive curriculum review process; Embracing curriculum as a shared responsibility among faculty and administration led to widespread participation; The collaboration of various groups within the institution in the process promoted organizational change; Cultural issues regarding people and organizational structure served as barriers to the collaboration process, simultaneously the curriculum team’s sense of community strengthened the curriculum review process. This position paper therefore recommends that the Ministry of Education in conjunction with the Ghana Education Service should ensure that the practice of curriculum change is highly decentralized to reflect local concerns. Thus, the decentralization of the process would be tailored towards the local needs of the area. This would make education more meaningful and relevant to students
Relationship Between Research and Teaching in Business Education: Synergistic, Complementary or Parasitic?
The current relationship existing between research and teaching in contemporary Business Education in the higher education discourse is critical to the survival of quality education across the globe. Notwithstanding the different interpretations (marital status, impending divorce, holy alliance and useful link) ascribed to the relationship between research, subsequent studies have adopted several approaches to measuring these two core mandates of the individual academic and their possible integration. For the purpose of this study, research productivity and teaching effectiveness were used as proxies for gauging the relationship. Even though, several earlier studies have concentrated on espousing a clearer link between research and teaching, most of these studies have not been able to come out with this relationship in specific terms such as the relationship between faculty member’s research productivity and teaching effectiveness within the Business Education landscape. Using the stratified disproportionate sampling technique, 201 Business Education faculty members engaged from public universities in Ghana for the 2020-2021 academic year. A self-developed questionnaire was used for data collection. The questionnaires were validated through the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method. The data were analysed inferentially (i.e., regression analysis), and descriptively (i.e., means, standard deviations). In all, it was found that research productivity is a significant positive predictor of teaching effectiveness. It is therefore, recommended that as part of the university’s mechanisms for determining the teaching efficacy of faculty members, the management of universities are encouraged to incorporate research-teaching integration components into promotions and tenure-tracks by way of encouraging faculty members to promote research-based teaching. Also, faculty members should make the conscious effort to strike a balance between time devoted to teaching and time devoted for research in order to optimise the benefits derived from the perceived synergistic relationship between research and teaching. Keywords: Research, teaching, research productivity, teaching effectiveness, research-teaching nexus, faculty members, synergistic DOI: 10.7176/JLPG/120-14 Publication date: April 30th 202
Conceptualising the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning within the Context of the Research--Teaching Nexus in Higher Education
Conceptualising the research-teaching nexus within the context of the scholarship of teaching and learning is really intriguing. This is attributed to the different notions held by several scholars and stakeholders within the higher educational landscape. Though, previous studies have attempted to espouse how several stakeholders have thought about the link between research and teaching, however, these attempts have not materialised. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to espouse how lecturers conceptualise the research-teaching nexus, especially, within the context of the scholarship of teaching and learning and to further establish whether their conceptualisation differ across their ranks. Using the descriptive cross-sectional survey design, and through a questionnaire, 732 lecturers were selected using the stratified proportionate technique to respond to the survey. In order to ensure the construct validity of the self-developed questionnaire, a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was conducted. An oblique, specifically, promax rotation was used, where the eigenvalue-greater-than-one rule was used to determine an appropriate number of factors to retain. In terms of data analysis, after a thorough check, the closed-ended questionnaire items were analysed statistically using descriptive statistics (i.e. frequency counts, percentages, means, and standard deviations) and inferential statistics (MANOVA) was also used to examine the statistical effects and differences between lecturers’ rank and their conceptualisation. It emanated from the study that lecturers conceptualise the research-teaching nexus as knowledge currency, as well as, scholarship and curriculum orientations. And that a statistically significant difference existed between the levels of lecturers’ rank and their conceptualisation of the link between research and teaching. It was therefore, concluded that several stakeholders and scholars have different connotations and representations of the research-teaching nexus, especially, within the context of the research-teaching nexus. It is therefore, recommended that University authorities should encourage their faculty to embrace and apply research-based teaching in their teaching and learning expedition. Lecturers must also ensure that pedagogical practices must be thoroughly prepared, constantly reviewed, and explicitly linked to the topic they teach by way of promoting scholarship at the highest level. Keywords:Research-teaching nexus, scholarship of teaching and learning, knowledge currency conceptualisation, scholarship-oriented conceptualisation, curriculum-oriented conceptualisation DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/12-6-02 Publication date:March 31st 202
An Explanatory Sequential Approach to Conflicting Views Among Supervisors During Off – Campus Teaching Practice Supervision at The University of Cape Coast
This research investigated the conflicting views amongst supervisors during the teaching practicum supervision on the field experience (Off -Campus) at the University of Cape Coast. Â The researchers employed the pragmatist philosophy towards research which employed the sequential explanatory mixed method design. Multi-stage and the proportionate stratified sampling technique were used to select respondents for the study. Questionnaire were the main instrument for gathering quantitative responses. However, focus group discussion guide, interview and content analysis were used to gather both qualitative data for the study. The quantitative results were presented through descriptive and inferential statistics, using tables, percentages, frequencies as well means and standard deviations. The qualitative analysis was in the form of narratives and thematic analysis. The study revealed that the remarks given by supervisors have tremendous impacts on the teaching of student-teachers. The study further established that, the student-teachers careless about the remarks made by supervisors thereby rejecting especially the negative remarks of the supervisors and others also challenged the comments of supervisors when they felt what they have done was right. The result of the hypothesis revealed that there is no statistically significant difference in the reactions of student-teachers towards the remarks of supervisors in terms of gender. Keywords: Teaching Practice, Supervision, conflicts, Teaching Methods, Teaching Goals, On & Off Campus, Field Experience, Student Teaching, Bachelor of Education DOI: 10.7176/JEP/13-9-04 Publication date:March 31st 202