During the period under colonial rule Ghanaian traditional life styles were largely destroyed and foreign value systems imposed. Following independence in 1957 the concept of National Consciousness, which seeks to encourage models of traditional forms in all new developments, was proposed. This thesis addresses the need to introduce traditional dance into the Ghanaian University system in response to the concept of National Consciousness. The thesis is divided into two parts. Part One is a survey of traditional dance models and their significance for new developments, while Part Two examines these models as applied activities in dance eduction and theatre work. In Part One traditional dances and related arts are treated in Chapters 1 and 2 while the developments of concepts for national integration through the dances are treated in Chapters 3 and 4. In Part Two concepts of dance in education are examined in Chapter 5; the roles of dance in education as well as models in subject programming in Chapter 6 and curriculum development for first degree courses in Chapter 7. Chapter 8 looks at the contributions of the various Chapters to the development of an African orientated dance programme for education and theatre practice in emergent African societies. The study is limited to the Country of Ghana though the findings may have implication for other African countries.

This qualitative case study explores how policy is developed and implemented in public universities in Ghana, using the case of the University of Education, Winneba. It draws on a theoretical rationale in which inclusion and inclusiveness are seen as paramount (Lewin, 1951; Schein, 1995; Robins, 2003) to specifically question the influence of different stakeholder groups in the development and implementation of policies in the University. The study utilized data from two sources: the analysis of policy documents, and semi-structured one-on-one interviews with fifteen senior non-teaching and teaching staff in three of the four University of Education campuses. The findings discussed in the two analysis chapters – Chapter Four and Chapter Five - indicate that not all stakeholders of the university community are involved in policy reforms. The discussion in Chapter Four suggests that some policy reforms are handled by the Governing Council and/or the Academic Board without much consultation with stakeholders. Junior level staff are the most excluded from the policymaking process with the effect that in some cases University management decisions become policies. Chapter Five discusses stakeholder participation and finds that efforts are made to disseminate policies although there are gaps in the dissemination methods and implementation. The main policy implementation gaps are the lack of proper evaluation and follow-up mechanisms for investigating the magnitude of collegiate participation and the impacts of such participation. Given that all the stakeholders are required to support new policies irrespective of their gender and/or position, the study contends that collegial participation in the policy development and implementation processes is very important. Overall, it may be argued that stakeholder perspectives on policy development practices within UEW contradicts Muller's (2007) concerns that academic institutions are nurtured through the adoption of sound policies through wide faculty consultation. Due to the small number (fifteen) of participants and considering that this was a case study, it is recommended that future studies are scaled up to include a fuller range of views (junior and senior members) from both public and private universities.

This thesis examines the factors that make the low-fee private school (LFPS) accessible to the poor. While the provision of education in developing countries has traditionally been regarded as the responsibility of the state, recent evidence on the growth of the LFPS in such contexts appears to challenge the government's role as the most viable option. The main argument of the thesis is that the poor have no real choice. The thesis also argues that fee-free public education only provides a partial solution to the financial barrier to access since there are factors other than direct costs that influence the way poor households respond to principles of supply and demand for education. The state's role in the provision of education is supported by the argument that it is a public good, and it must therefore remain the responsibility of the government to protect the poor and other vulnerable groups from denial of access. Nevertheless, private education provision is a growth enterprise in rural areas, one key reason for which is the perception that it provides a better quality of education than the state can offer. Given such expansion in an era of fee-free public education, some commentators have questioned whether those that send their children to an LFPS can really be described as poor, since school choice is clearly dependant on the ability to meet the costs. In order to understand how the cost and quality of education interact with school choice decisions, 536 households in three poor rural communities of Mfantseman District, Central Region, Ghana were surveyed. The data were used to examine the difference in cost between public and private provision, and to explore those factors associated with school choice and the related expenditure. In addition, to gain further insight into the implications of the survey's statistical outcomes, a number of participants with interests in both public and private schools were interviewed – including 38 household heads in the lowest income quintile, 6 head teachers, 14 teachers, 8 parents, 7 Parent Teacher Association (PTA) executives and 3 School Management Committee (SMC) executives with children in both school types. The findings reject the hypothesis that school choice in the communities under study was not affected by socio-economic factors, since the majority of households had no real option. In particular, the prohibitive cost of food at both types of school, but compulsoriness at LFPSs, had adverse consequences on the willingness of children to attend. However, a minority of poor households that did access LFPSs were able to do so due to school practices such as flexible fee schemes, teacher discipline and better interaction with parents, as well as through assistance obtained via social networks. In addition, the study also finds that private schools had a better track record in BECE examination than public schools in the communities under study. What is clear is that, this better BECE track record by LFPSs coupled with higher aspirations that some poor households have for their children fuelled interest in private schooling. The study concludes that the claim that the rural poor access LFPS in numbers has been exaggerated. This is because it is the relatively better-off households that enrol their children in private school, while a minority of the poor that access LFPSs are able to do so because of manipulative school practices and the nature of its interaction with parents. As a result, the study suggests that it would be in the interests of the poor if rural public schools were improved – including the provision of free school meals – given that greater state support to the private education sector would only benefit the relatively better off. Finally, fee-free public schooling facilitated by the capitation grant should ensure that schools are more accountable to the communities they serve – schools should be made to show how the grant was used to improve access and quality and together with the community set targets for improvement. Improving academic quality and teacher discipline would enable them to restore their image in rural communities and hence encourage demand for public education.

Universities in many industrialized countries including Japan, and Australia, have enabled those countries to achieve rapid economic and social advancement. However, this is untrue for the universities of Ghana, due to the country's ailing economy, its continued dependence on foreign manpower, aid, and material goods. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to illuminate the major factors and events that have controlled and inhibited the development of higher education in Ghana from 1948 to 1984. The method of acquiring data involved a computer and manual search for documents from 1) ERIC Database, 2) libraries , and 3) Embassy of Ghana, Washington, D.C. The findings include (1) Establishment of universities on the basis of the Asquith Doctrine; (2) Imitation of British universities' curriculum, constitution, standards and social functions; (3) Characterization of universities by elitism, lack of diversity and adaptation, autonomy, excellence and narrow specialism in their honor degree programs; (4) Emphasis on cognitive rather than psychomotor learning; (5) Matriculation of inadequately qualified secondary school science students; (6) Absence of a nationally formulated statement of manpower needs, goals, and effective long-term planning; (7) Financial exigencies; (8) Suppression, perversion and abuse of academic and intellectual freedom by the government and universities; (9) Inconsistent governmental policies due to abrupt changes in government by military coups.

This dissertation is a video ethnography of the enculturation and learning patterns among children on three school playgrounds in the Central Region of Ghana, West Africa. It includes a) a discussion of colonialism on the redefinition of Ghanaian cultural identity in relation to play culture and the school curriculum b) performance-based case studies of six singing games, which comprise a description of sound and structural features and an explanation of cultural forms evident in singing games and c) a discussion on the role multimedia technologies (video, audio, and computer technologies) played in configuring my explanations and the explanations of all participants: children, teachers, and community members. Goldman-Segall' s "configurational validity" is the conceptual basis of this ethnography of Ghanaian children's music cultures. Configurational validity is a collaborative theory for analyzing video documents that expands on the premise that research is enriched by multiple points of view. Performance stylistic features of singing games emerge that reflected the marriage of two music cultures, indigenous Ghanaian and European. These include: speech tones, onomatopoeia, repetition and elaboration of recurring melodic cliches, portamentos or cadential drops, syncopations, triplets, melisma, polyrhythms, vocables, anacrusis, strophic, circle, lines, and partner formations. During play, the children were cultural interlocutors and recipients of adult cultural interlocution as they learned about accepted and shared social behavioural patterns, recreated their culture, and demonstrated the changing Ghanaian culture. The culture forms that emerged include community solidarity, inclusion, ways of exploring and expressing emotions, coordination, cooperation, gender relations, and linguistic code switching. For children in Ghana, knowledge is uninhibited shared constructions; knowledge grows when every one is involved; and knowledge is like "midwifery." I recommended a teaching style that encouraged the expression of children's wide ranging knowledge by a) offering opportunities for cooperative learning through group work, b) encouraging continuous assessment, c) establishing stronger ties with the adult community, and d) recognizing that the ability of children to hear, interpret, and compensate for dialectic differences in closely related languages can be used to enrich the language arts curriculum and also e) recognizing that the cultural studies curriculum can be enriched by the ability of children to re-create hybrid performing arts cultures.

This dissertation is a video ethnography of the enculturation and learning patterns among children on three school playgrounds in the Central Region of Ghana, West Africa. It includes a) a discussion of colonialism on the redefinition of Ghanaian cultural identity in relation to play culture and the school curriculum b) performance-based case studies of six singing games, which comprise a description of sound and structural features and an explanation of cultural forms evident in singing games and c) a discussion on the role multimedia technologies (video, audio, and computer technologies) played in configuring my explanations and the explanations of all participants: children, teachers, and community members. Goldman-Segall' s "configurational validity" is the conceptual basis of this ethnography of Ghanaian children's music cultures. Configurational validity is a collaborative theory for analyzing video documents that expands on the premise that research is enriched by multiple points of view. Performance stylistic features of singing games emerge that reflected the marriage of two music cultures, indigenous Ghanaian and European. These include: speech tones, onomatopoeia, repetition and elaboration of recurring melodic cliches, portamentos or cadential drops, syncopations, triplets, melisma, polyrhythms, vocables, anacrusis, strophic, circle, lines, and partner formations. During play, the children were cultural interlocutors and recipients of adult cultural interlocution as they learned about accepted and shared social behavioural patterns, recreated their culture, and demonstrated the changing Ghanaian culture. The culture forms that emerged include community solidarity, inclusion, ways of exploring and expressing emotions, coordination, cooperation, gender relations, and linguistic code switching. For children in Ghana, knowledge is uninhibited shared constructions; knowledge grows when every one is involved; and knowledge is like "midwifery." I recommended a teaching style that encouraged the expression of children's wide ranging knowledge by a) offering opportunities for cooperative learning through group work, b) encouraging continuous assessment, c) establishing stronger ties with the adult community, and d) recognizing that the ability of children to hear, interpret, and compensate for dialectic differences in closely related languages can be used to enrich the language arts curriculum and also e) recognizing that the cultural studies curriculum can be enriched by the ability of children to re-create hybrid performing arts cultures. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

No description available.

The aims of physical education in Ghana include developing personal qualities such as competence in students and generating interest in physical education and sports (Ghana Education Service, [GES], 1987). The GES has also reiterated the need to have competent teachers in the implementation of the school physical education syllabus; therefore few primary schools in Ghana have physical education specialists (detached teachers). There is the need to assess the impact these specialist teachers have on students in relation to classroom teachers and the extent to which the aims of physical education are being achieved. The primary purpose of this study was to determine if differences existed between students taught by physical education specialists and those taught by classroom teachers in their perceptions of competence, affect, and persistence in sports. It was hypothesized that students who were taught by physical education specialists would be significantly different from those taught by non-specialist teachers in their perceptions of competence, affect, and persistence. A sample of 483 class six boys and girls from four regions in Ghana completed items measuring perceptions of competence, affect, and persistence in sports. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed significant main effects for category (p<.001) and gender (p<.05) in each of the four regions examined. Students taught by specialist teachers differed significantly from those taught by classroom teachers in their perceptions of affect and persistence in sports. Findings also showed that students in specialist teacher and non-specialist teacher categories did not differ significantly in their perceptions of competence. Furthermore, results indicated that the significant gender effect was minimal and not meaningful. Overall, the present study provided further evidence of the influence of physical education specialists on amount of enjoyment students derive from sports. Findings also suggest the need for Ghanaian physical education teachers to improve upon their modes of teaching in order to enhance their students' competence perceptions. Attempts should also be made to validate Harter's (1985) Self-Perception Profile for Children for use within the Ghanaian culture and to find those specific areas on which students base their competence judgments. / Graduation date: 1998

No description available.

Educational subsidies are becoming important mechanisms in promoting access to education among many countries. In Ghana, subsidy for Secondary Education is available to all students irrespective of their income backgrounds with the government granting only partial subsidies. Despite the strong political commitment to redress historical inequities in educational funding mechanisms, policy actions in relation to Secondary Education Financing in Ghana appear to fall short of achieving the desirable goals when viewed through a vertical equity philosophical perspective. It was against this background that this study sought to explore the management of educational subsidies in public Senior High Schools in Ghana and its implications for enhancing meaningful access and participation in Secondary Education. Although the education financing field presents a landscape and proliferation of theories, this study employed the vertical equity theory as its theoretical foundation. The study employed the concurrent triangulation research strategy by incorporating both positivist and interpretivist paradigms (combining both qualitative and statistical analysis). This was necessary because of the wide range of data needed to draw the necessary conclusion on effective funding mechanism for Secondary Education. Heads of Senior High Schools, management of the Secondary Education Division of the Ghana Education Service and parents of students at the secondary school level participated in the study. Both primary and secondary data were collected. Interview guides were used in the collection of qualitative data while statistical data were collected from EMIS. Statistical data analysis was done using Microsoft Excel. The qualitative data from the interviews were thematically analysed using data transcription. The study found out that, social accountability mechanisms to monitor how heads of schools utilised their allocated funds are highly ineffective due to lack of transparency. There were weak internal controls and monitoring systems. The releases of the subsidy have been unduly delayed due to government inability to release the funds on time. The subsidy as a mechanism of financing Secondary Education in Ghana is quite inequitable; giving students with different needs the same amounts of resources. There is the need to verify the enrolment figures submitted by heads of schools for the subsidies before disbursement of funds are made while ensuring that the relevant stakeholders are involved in the management of the funds. Government alone cannot afford to provide secondary education hence a cost sharing policy seems to be the optimal choice in providing adequate funds to schools. However, it is essential to ensure that the poor who lack the ability to pay in a cost sharing system are targeted and their education paid for by the government. Again policies in relation to education financing must consider the principles of equity, affordability, adequacy and efficiency. The implication therefore is the formulation of an objective, targeting mechanism to cater for those who cannot pay.