Abstract:
The study examined gender dimension in the development of effective teaching skills among distance education (DE)
students. The conceptual framework for the study is gender mainstreaming which centres on pluralistic approach to
diversity issues among both men and women. A longitudinal developmental research design was used for the study.
A sample size of 376 distance education students made up of 173(46.01%) female and 203 (53.99%) male were
purposefully selected from 5 regional study centres of College of Distance Education, University of Cape Coast
(UCC) across Ghana. Data was collected using the Teaching Practice (Practicum) Assessment Form ‘A’ of UCC.
The two research questions sought to find out the performance of male and female DE students on On-Centre
Teaching Practice (OCTP) and School-Based Teaching Practice (SBTP) respectively. Five hypotheses were also
formulated to guide the study. Results of the study revealed that the teaching skills acquired by both male and female
DE students during OCTP and SBTP were good. However, a statistically significant difference exists between the
teaching skills acquired by male and female DE students. Similarly, gender was found to have effect on the
acquisition of teaching skills. It is recommended that all policy makers in the area of teaching practice should be
mindful of gender issues in the development of teaching skills. Institutions involved in training teachers using
distance education mode should stress the four levels of effective teaching skills assessed in this paper for
meaningful practical teaching during teaching practice.
