Assessment practices of teacher training college tutors in Ghana

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to investigate whether tutors in the teacher training colleges follow the basic laid down principles of testing practices, especially, test construction, administration and scoring of classroom or teacher-made tests in the teacher training colleges. The study adopted the descriptive design and covered 20 public teacher training colleges in Ghana comprising 230 male and 80 female teacher training college tutors. The main instrument used for the study was the questionnaire. The instrument was developed and pre-tested by the researcher. The data was analyzed using means and standard deviations, frequency and percentages, and independent samples-t test. For all tests, the level of significance was at 0.05. The study showed that, teacher training college tutors did not follow the basic principles of testing in the construction of teacher-made or classroom tests, and that they perceived the management of assessment practices in the colleges as extra load to their teaching activities. It is recommended that regular in-service training in testing practices be organized for teacher training college tutors by Teacher Education Division of the Ghana Education Service and the Institute of Education of the University of Cape Coast in collaboration with the experts in Educational Measurement and Evaluation at the University of Cape Coast.