TEACHER COMPETENCE FOR THE MUSIC AND DANCE CURRICULUM IN GHANA
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55197/qjssh.v2i3.78Keywords:
competence, Effutu, generalist, creative arts, music and danceAbstract
Teaching Music and Dance in Ghanaian primary schools has been a responsibility of the generalist teachers, who are usually ignorant about the subject and therefore, cannot interpret the Music and Dance syllabus. These teachers usually received their music training during the few years of their initial training at the Colleges of Education. Considering the specialized nature of music, we have raised concerns about the quality of music training education offered in the primary schools, especially with regards to teacher competence in the content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and the general level of musicianship. Through an inductive research procedure, using five newly trained teachers posted to primary schools in Winneba, this case study, rooted in the Confucian philosophical underpinning, sought to investigate how the Music and Dance aspect of the Creative Arts curriculum was being handled by the generalist teachers. We also explored various ways teachers could be empowered to achieve success in teaching the subject. The study revealed that the generalist teachers did not possess adequate content and pedagogical abilities to teach Music and Dance. They therefore, resorted to unconventional ways of engaging learners which could not promote conceptualization of musical knowledge, skills and attitudes among learners. Our recommendations then included extension of duration for the pre-service music and dance curriculum, encouraging more student-teachers to major in music and dance specialty teacher preparation and participation in periodic in-service training programmes, through which they could be equipped with the necessary competences to augment their output.
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