The Saga of Diagnosing the Entry Behaviors of Ghanaian First Graders

In Ghana, on average, a child enters the first year of the primary school at the age of six because few manage to go to first grade at the age of five. About 30% of these children would have had access to kindergarten or nursery education for at least one year (Ministry of Education, 1995). There are some children who before entering first grade, would have had early education on a continuum from one to three years. Yet, the majority of children will enter the first year in the primary school with no prior exposure to early education. Therefore, they encounter large amounts of obstacles in their classrooms such as holding a piece of chalk or a pencil. The purpose of the study is to investigate the hardships of first graders, which stem from fundamental weaknesses of Ghanaian education, and how their challenges reflect upon the entry behaviors of the students. The crux of the matter is that to develop leaders for tomorrow we need to pay attention to the students of today. According to a report from the Centre for Research into Quality Primary Education in Ghana (CRIQPEG), the country had one of the most developed educational systems in Africa but, as a result of political instability and economic mismanagement educational facilities, have deteriorated had and achievement levels fallen abysmally (CRIQPEG, 1993)

Factors Influencing Language-Learning Strategy Use of English Learners in an ESL Context

This study employed the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL), version 7.0 (ESL/EFL) developed by Oxford (1990) to examine differences in language-learning strategy use. It focused on how learner factors such as gender, age, nationality, and proficiency level influence the choice of language-learning strategies. The participants were 75 international students at Ohio University. The results showed that participants used social and metacognitive strategies at a high frequency level; meanwhile, affective and memory strategies were selected the least. Statistic significance was found in the choice of several strategies across the factors examined. Pedagogical implications were also discussed

Language and Care: Tensions for Japanese Teachers and Foreign Students in Japanese Schools

Current Japanese schools have maintained the homogeneous discourse, based on the majority, ethnic Japanese, embedded in the national curriculum. In addition to the homogeneous discourse, Tsuneyoshi (2003) argues that Japanese schools have an educational philosophy of egalitarianism, asserting that “all children are treated the same.” Egalitarianism in schools refers to working to provide the same materials for all students, teaching all at the same pace, and, frequently not offering additional support for particular students (Gordon, 2006). In other words, students need to share a high level of commonalities, such as a common language, a shared belief system and behavioral norms, family stability, and a sense of belonging (Tsuneyoshi, 2001). Shimizu, Sakai, Shimizu, and Dotera (1999, cited in Gordon, 2006) also mention that the belief of egalitarianism makes it difficult for teachers to recognize the unique qualities and needs of each student

Development and Evaluation of Diagnostically Supported Teaching Strategies to Reduce School Failure in Ghana

This work covers the critical problem of high school dropouts and failure in the Ghanaian educational setting. In the first instance, a large proportion of studies have tended to concentrate on the higher classes and end-of –cycle testing. They can be seen as post-mortem analyses, which only indicate the irrevocable catastrophe but do not lead to prevention. Therefore this dissertation sought to identify the variance among the learning pre-requisites that Ghanaian class one children enter the school with against the background of an inflexible syllabus coupled with a predominant use of undifferentiated teaching methodology. From literature review, personal intensive observations and experience the following conclusions were drawn: ·School failure in Ghana is as a result of a complex inter-play of factors such as years of certain uninformed policies of successive governments, the situation of the teacher, curriculum and textbook usage, instructional language policy, length of school year use of instructional time and political instability among others. ·Classroom methodologies are predominantly teacher-dominated, undifferentiated and do not support adequately the learning of weaker pupils. ·Traditional practices and philosophies about the child have an influence on the teaching-learning encounter. ·There are identifiable weaknesses in the competence of delivery and mastery of both subject matter and other pedagogical skills. With a large class size, without the support of diagnostic tools to identify the abilities of children in order to tailor the teaching to cater for individual differences, teaching is unattractive, tedious and an unwieldy task. Learning in such an environment will be demotivational and attainment of institutional goals will be greatly undermined. As a first step in modifying the existing situation a pre-diagnostic instrument put together by the researcher was used to assess 120 and 158 class one pupils in a pilot and main study respectively to show how varied the abilities of the children are and which factors have influence on the variance. In this regard a broad variety of skill areas were assessed with a focus on functional items, drawing, English and number work in a very practical way. Purposive and simple random sampling techniques were adopted in the selection of the sample from rural, urban, private and public schools. The results showed the following: ·A wide variance among the pre-requisite skills that the children enter school with. ·Ghanaian children who possess higher English language ability, having pre-school experience, attending an urban school and being in a private school have a higher chance of school success. ·Sex is not strong determinants of performance among the sample. Based on these assessment results intervention with teachers were carried out in three class one classrooms, but one was reported in detail. The feedback from the interventions was very positive and encouraging and showed among others that: ·Teachers are capable of initiating changes in their teaching methodologies. ·Head teachers can supervise school-based in-service education and training. The dissertation concludes with some suggestions for policy, teacher professionalism, educational planners and for future research in order to achieve target objectives

Entwicklung und Erprobung eines diagnostisch gestützten Unterrichtskonzepts zur Reduzierung des Schulversagens in Ghana

This work covers the critical problem of high school dropouts and failure in the Ghanaian educational setting. In the first instance, a large proportion of studies have tended to concentrate on the higher classes and end-of –cycle testing. They can be seen as post-mortem analyses, which only indicate the irrevocable catastrophe but do not lead to prevention. Therefore this dissertation sought to identify the variance among the learning pre-requisites that Ghanaian class one children enter the school with against the background of an inflexible syllabus coupled with a predominant use of undifferentiated teaching methodology. From literature review, personal intensive observations and experience the following conclusions were drawn: ·School failure in Ghana is as a result of a complex inter-play of factors such as years of certain uninformed policies of successive governments, the situation of the teacher, curriculum and textbook usage, instructional language policy, length of school year use of instructional time and political instability among others. ·Classroom methodologies are predominantly teacher-dominated, undifferentiated and do not support adequately the learning of weaker pupils. ·Traditional practices and philosophies about the child have an influence on the teaching-learning encounter. ·There are identifiable weaknesses in the competence of delivery and mastery of both subject matter and other pedagogical skills. With a large class size, without the support of diagnostic tools to identify the abilities of children in order to tailor the teaching to cater for individual differences, teaching is unattractive, tedious and an unwieldy task. Learning in such an environment will be demotivational and attainment of institutional goals will be greatly undermined. As a first step in modifying the existing situation a pre-diagnostic instrument put together by the researcher was used to assess 120 and 158 class one pupils in a pilot and main study respectively to show how varied the abilities of the children are and which factors have influence on the variance. In this regard a broad variety of skill areas were assessed with a focus on functional items, drawing, English and number work in a very practical way. Purposive and simple random sampling techniques were adopted in the selection of the sample from rural, urban, private and public schools. The results showed the following: ·A wide variance among the pre-requisite skills that the children enter school with. ·Ghanaian children who possess higher English language ability, having pre-school experience, attending an urban school and being in a private school have a higher chance of school success. ·Sex is not strong determinants of performance among the sample. Based on these assessment results intervention with teachers were carried out in three class one classrooms, but one was reported in detail. The feedback from the interventions was very positive and encouraging and showed among others that: ·Teachers are capable of initiating changes in their teaching methodologies. ·Head teachers can supervise school-based in-service education and training. The dissertation concludes with some suggestions for policy, teacher professionalism, educational planners and for future research in order to achieve target objectives.Die vorliegende Arbeit greift das Problem der hohen Schulabbrecher-Quote in Zusammenhang mit dem gehäuft auftretenden Schulversagen in Ghana auf. In einer ersten Annäherung haben sich die bisherigen Forschungen auf Untersuchungen in höheren Schulklassen und von Schulabgängern konzentriert. Sie können als post-mortem-Analysen bezeichnet werden, die lediglich die unausweichliche Katastrophe anzeigen, aber nicht zu ihrer Verhinderung beitragen. Aus diesem Grunde wurde mit der vorliegenden Dissertation versucht, die Streubreite der Lernvoraussetzungen von Schulanfängern zu ermitteln und vor dem Hintergrund eines unflexiblen Eingangs-Curriculums sowie einem vorwiegend praktizierten Gebrauch undifferenzierter Unterrichtsmethoden zu diskutieren. So lassen sich einschlägige Literaturstudien und eigene intensive Beobachtungen wie folgt zusammenfassen: ·Schulversagen in Ghana ist das Resultat eines komplexen Zusammenwirkens zahlreicher Faktoren wie Dauer der Versäumnisse bezüglich der Informationspolitik in Bildungsangelegenheiten, der Situation der Lehrer, der Qualität der Currricula, der Verfügbarkeit von Lehrmitteln, der gewählten Unterrichtssprache, Dauer und Häufigkeit des Schulbesuchs, Nutzung der Unterrichtszeit und politische Instabilität sowie weiterer Bedingungen. ·Die Unterrichtsmethoden sind weitgehend lehrerzentriert, undifferenziert und wenig hilfreich für schwächere Schüler. ·Traditionelle Erziehungspraktiken und Vorurteile über Kinder beeinflussen die Schüler-Lehrer-Interaktionen. ·Es lassen sich somit deutliche Schwächen bezüglich der Kompetenz von Lehrern identifizieren, welche ihre didaktischen und methodischen Fähigkeiten betreffen. Bei großen Klassenstärken, dem Fehlen diagnostischer Instrumente zur Beschreibung der Fähigkeiten ihrer Schüler im Hinblick auf differenzierten Unterricht, ist Schule unattraktiv, kräftezehrend und eine sperrige Angelegenheit. Das sind demotivierende Bedingungen für schulisches Lernen, die das Erreichen der unterrichtlichen Ziele verhindern. Zur Änderung dieser Situation wurde in einem ersten Schritt ein von dem Verfasser zusammengestelltes diagnostisches Inventar an 120 und 158 Schulanfängern in einer pilot-Studie sowie einer Hauptuntersuchung angewandt. Dieses sehr praktische Verfahren erfasst ein breites Merkmalsspektrum mit inhaltlichen Schwerpunkten auf allgemeinem Weltwissen, Graphomotorik, Beherrschung der englischen Sprache und Lernvoraussetzungen für Mathematik. Dabei stand die Frage im Vordergrund, mit welchen Unterschieden bezüglich dieser Lernvoraussetzungen bei den Kindern zu rechenen ist und welche Faktoren sie beeinflussen. Auf der Grundlage von zielgerichteten und einfachen sampling-Techniken wurden vergleichbare Stichproben in ländlichen, städtischen, privaten und öffentlichen Schulen zusammengestellt. Es zeigten sich folgende Ergebnisse: ·Die interindividuelle Varianz bezüglich der individuellen Lernvoraussetzungen für den Schulanfang war extrem groß. ·Kinder mit besonders guten Leistungen bevorzugen die englische Sprache, kommen ausschließlich aus städtischen Gebieten, haben vorwiegend vorschulische Einrichtungen besucht und sind häufiger in privaten Schulen anzutreffen. ·Das Geschlecht ist keine wesentliche Determinante eines guten Leistungsstandes. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser Ergebnisse wurden Interventionsmöglichkeiten mit den Lehrern aus drei ersten Klassen erkundet, wobei diese in einem Fall detailliert beschrieben wurden. Die Rückmeldungen waren positiv und ermutigend. Dabei zeigte sich: ·Lehrer sind durchaus befähigt, sich auf Änderungen ihrer Unterrichtsmethodik einzulassen. ·Schulleiter können schulinterne Fortbildungen durchführen. Die Arbeit schließt mit Empfehlungen für bildungspolitische Maßnahmen, Lehrerbildung, Bildungsplanung und weitere Forschungsaufgaben

The Infuence Of Grade Span On Student Achievement In Florida: A Quantitative Investigation

The creation–-through both new construction and reconfiguration of enrollments in existing facilities–-of schools with broader grade spans is increasing in Florida and elsewhere in the United States. The extant literature reports increased fiscal efficiency resulting from the approach, but the potential influence on student outcomes is largely unexplored. This article reports on a completed quantitative study investigating the influence of grade-span configurations on student achievement among Florida public schools (n = 3,523). Results are interpreted to suggest that broader grade spans (e.g., K-8 versus K-5) might represent a viable policy option for administrators and policymakers seeking improved academic outcomes