Vocationalizing secondary education: the junior secondary schooling reform of 1987 in Ghana

摘要

This study addresses educational reform in Ghana with reference to the junior secondary schooling. The empirical data on junior secondary teachers and pupils used here is taken from a larger case study of the junior secondary school innovation in Ghana. This offers some new perspectives on the realities of Ghanaian junior secondary schooling, which illustrates some of the workings and consequences of the vocationalized curriculum policy that has been adopted. The study analyses how the planned changes were not clearly conceptualized and how there was a very serious lack of communication between many different parts of the system. The classroom observation showed that the ideas set out in the National Education Policy, such as integrated approaches to subject matter, student involvement and problem-oriented teaching methods, were not being put into practice by teachers. Neither training nor resources had been directed towards helping the teachers to change.