Teacher support and equipment usage in the regular primary schools in the Hohoe district of Ghana

Abstract

The proposal to make all basic schools practise inclusive education by 2015 in Ghana will require that teachers are supported to use equipment to facilitate the teaching and the learning process. The purpose of the study was to investigate categories of persons provide support to the teachers, types of support provided for teachers, the extent of equipment usage in the classroom and the relationship between teachers who are supported, and equipment utilization in primary school classrooms. Three hundred and nine teachers made up of 161 males and 148 females formed the sample which was selected through multistage random sampling. The participants responded to an 18 item self-designed questionnaire with Cronbach’s reliability alpha of .76. The results indicated that majority of the'.teachers confirmed that they received support from resource teachers, special education officers, school heads, school counscllor/psychologists and parents. The types of support teachers received included instructional, equipment/materials, psychological and collaboration/ consultation. The results also revealed that there was a significant relationship between teachers who received support and those who did not in the type of equipment they used in
teaching. And again, it was found out that there was no significant difference in relationship between the male and the female teachers in equipment usage. It is therefore, recommended that the educational authorities should develop an adequate support system in the schools for the teachers, and should also provide the state of the art teaching equipment for the use by the teachers.