Abstract:
The purpose of the study was to examine the impact of instructional
quality on trainee-teacher effectiveness in the delivery of Distance Education
(DE) in Ghana, focusing on College of Distance Education, University of
Cape Coast (CoDE, UCC). The descriptive survey design was adopted with a
quantitative approach. Total population involving 1,837 CoDE course tutors
and all CoDE students at all the 76 study centres offering education
programmes totalling 51,456 was used. The sample size for the study was 726,
made up of 397 trainee-teachers and 329 course tutors. The proportionate
stratified random sampling approach was employed to select respondents who
completed the questionnaire instruments. Both descriptive and inferential
statistics were used to analyse the data. The results revealed that pedagogical
quality and quality evaluation were the dimensions of instructional quality that
were highly perceived by trainee-teachers of the college. The study showed
that, whenever trainee-teachers demonstrate high level of competence in terms
of subject matter knowledge, lesson presentation skills, class management and
control and lesson note preparation, they increase the extent to which their
level of teaching meets pre-specified standards and goals of the college. It was
recommended from the study that management of the college should put in
place appropriate support services in all the study centres to guide both tutors
and students on appropriate instructional behaviours.
