METHODS IN GHANAIAN PRIMARY MATHEMATICS TEXTBOOKS AND TEACHERS’ CLASSROOM PRACTICE

Abstract

The official school mathematics curriculum has a powerful influence on classroom practice in a developing country like Ghana, where many teachers with low teaching qualifications hardly ever have access to other sources of information and activity for their teaching. The study reported in this paper investigated the congruence between the teaching methods presented in the official curriculum materials and teachers’ classroom practice. The study involved a range of methods: classroom observation and content and discourse analyses of lessons in mathematics. The study found that, though there was rhetoric in the introduction of the curriculum materials on the use of discovery teaching methods, few learning/teaching activities that would encourage the use of such discovery methods were included in the materials. It was observed that both the official curriculum and the teachers who implement it emphasise expository teaching methods.