Abstract:
The study explored teaching and classroom assessment practices of teachers who taught Integrated Science in public and private junior high schools in educational districts overserved with teachers yet produced low students’ performance in Integrated Science in Basic Education Certificate Examinations in the Central Region of Ghana. The study followed the Convergent Parallel Mixed Methods Research Design. Multi-stage sampling technique was employed to select a total of 246 teachers comprising 162 from public and 84 from private schools as well as 48 Form 2 junior high school students made up of 24 boys and 24 girls from the four overserved educational districts. Data on teachers’ teaching and classroom assessment practices were obtained through Questionnaire, Interviews and Lesson Observation. The results revealed that one-half of teachers who taught integrated science in both school-type possessed no professional certificate. Of these, majority (88.1%) were from private schools. Also, majority (74.4%) of teachers from the public schools possessed no professional certificate but had a background in senior high school science. It was found that teachers mainly used the expository method to teach, which did not resonate with the teaching methods prescribed in the 2012 JHS integrated science syllabus. The study found that teachers used in-class exercise and homework for classroom assessment. In private schools, teachers used in class exercise and homework more than those in public schools. Also, Integrated Science teachers used lower order questions which elicited factual knowledge for classroom assessment. It was recommended among others that only professional teachers with background in science should be made to teach integrated science in the junior high schools.
