Language teaching and language learning are intertwined, therefore it is important for the teacher to believe in the method they are going to adopt to present language to their students positively, thereby creating a classroom environment in which students feel able to learn; and the teacher feels fully equipped to teach.
SCT are committed to support the KEEA District Education Directorate to overcome the challenges they face; insufficient funds to effectively train, support and monitor the early years' teachers in the fifty seven schools under its jurisdiction. The teachers poor command of English and preference to speak in the local dialect of Fante. The favouring of older teaching practices of rote learning and the use of corporal punishment as the method of class control and discipline. The inadequate teaching and learning materials to engage children and the over subscribtion of kindergarten classrooms that create almost impossible conditions for the teachers to teach and the pupils to learn.
SCT and the KEEA District Education Assembly hope to work together to reduce the infrastructure challenges that are potential barriers to progression in the future. SCT hope to introduce newer teaching methods for the Kindergarten school teachers and train and guide them to embrace new classroom teaching techniques and implement a praise rather than a punishment, discipline approach in the classroom.
The teacher training will cover classroom management, humanistic teaching methods that embrace Total Physical Response, Multiple Intelligences, co-operative learning environments and a literacy teaching system based upon a Synthetic Phonic approach.
Fundamental to the teacher training external workshop series and the in-school in-service training, will be a set of teaching and learning materials that support the proposed programme.
Teachers require teaching materials that reflect their culture and are tailored to their environment. The materials need to create impact to interest the children and to engage them cognitively. The subject content and presentation should inspire the children to make mental and verbal associations drawn from their own life experiences to help them understand and develop their own thought processes.
The materials developed for Ghana are shaped by Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theories and cultural relativity based upon in-country research. The humanistic approach SLA theories support a comprehension approach and advocate that a socially active and supportive framework that is stress-free can help children to develop and learn at their own pace. Children's acquisition of the alphabet principle through a synthetic phonic pedagogy forms the English literacy teaching method to support the Ghana Education Service (GES) literacy targets.
The teacher training programme hopes to give kindergarten teachers the confidence and materials to change from their reliance on rote repetition drills and move towards interactive, fun and engaging experiential learning approaches. The new active methods naturally change the classroom dynamic because the children are encouraged to physically participate in the subject being taught. The humanistic praise approach, engaging children to explore the subject concepts in groups is much more motivating. It stimulates and develops pupils' cognitive skills to help them reach their learning potential.
SCT require funding to implement the teacher training programme and seek donors to sponsor it.
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