Enhancing Teacher Preparation Programme to Minimize Challenges of Mentors in the In-In-Out Programme of Holy Child College of Education

The purpose of this study was to find out how the teacher preparation programme was responding to the challenges of mentors and mentees in playing their roles so as to employ the appropriate strategies in addressing them to enhance the programme. Enhancing teacher preparation programme to minimize challenges faced by mentors in the out programme of Holy Child College of Education through selected intervention strategies was the aim of the study. The specific objectives were to assess the role of mentors in the out programme and put in place relevant interventional measures to improve its effectiveness.  The research questions include; to what extent were mentors providing support and guidance needed?  And to what extent would the selected interventional measures implemented minimize the challenges of mentors. The sample size of the study was 30.  This was made up of 18 females and 12 male mentors.  They were randomly and purposively selected respectively.  The instrument used for collecting the data for the study was questionnaire. The  intervention used were; series of lectures by out programme coordinator on the qualities of mentors, organisation of a three day training course for mentors on their attitudes towards mentees and inclusion of weekends on the study cycle meeting by link tutors. During the pre-intervention stage, the data collected revealed the following: absenteeism of mentors, lack of regular discussion and supervision by mentors, lead mentors and lack of appropriate teaching and learning materials. Mentors did provide support and guidance needed after the intervention in the areas of lesson planning, facilitating mentees’ learning and offered suggestions. Keywords: Mentor, Mentee, Challenge, interventio

Perceptions of Students on Environmental Challenge Issues

The purpose of this study was to investigate student’s perception of environmental challenge issues and its implication for science education. A standardized ROSE (Relevance of Science Education) survey questionnaire related to environment on 4-Point Likert-type scale was administered to 500 form three students of Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Authority (S.T.M.A) Senior High Schools. The data were subjected to descriptive statistical analyses and an independent sample 2-tailed t-test was used to explore the statistical significance at p ? 0.05.  The findings revealed that although young people were overwhelmingly optimistic about the future, environmental issues are clearly of concern to them.             The results also revealed that students in S.T.M.A. believed that they had a role to play in protecting the environment. The major findings of the study were that most boys and girls in this study strongly agreed that learning about the environmental challenge issues would prepare them for the future and that people should care more about the protection of the environment. They also agreed that something can be done to curtail the drastic alteration of the environment. Both boys and girls agreed that science and technology can solve environmental problems. The responses to this statement appear to show that the respondents have a high level of confidence in the ability of science and technology to solve environmental problems. They disagreed with the statement that threats to the environment were not each and everyone’s business and also disagreed that environmental problems should be left to the expert as can be seen from the low agreement level to both statements. There was a significant difference between boys and girls views on I know the earth is in trouble but don’t really care with a p-value of 0.031.  Keywords: Environment, challenge, management, education, eart