Teaching of STEM Subjects in Africa: Perspectives of Gender, Difficult Topics, School Ownership and Recommendation of CTCA

Abstract

The new senior secondary computer studies curriculum for multilingual West African schools came into use in 2015. Since the beginning of its application, there have been few reported studies on the difficulty level of the content as perceived by students, gender equity, and school ownership. The study had two main purposes–to find out (a) the topics in the new computer studies curriculum that secondary school students perceive to be difficult; (b) if gender, and school ownership impact students’ perception of the difficulty of the computer studies topics. Participants were 1,501 computer studies students from nine public and 12 private senior secondary schools in Nigeria and Ghana. About 51% of the respondents were females. Three-quarters of the schools are in urban areas, the rest are in rural locations. Rich qualitative data on the sources of difficulty (unique for this study) are reported. Slight gender differences and marked rural/urban differences were found. Recommendations were made for improving the teaching and learning of computer studies in African schools with the use of Culturo-Techno-Contextual Approach (CTCA).