The Ghana Science Association (GSA) has appealed to the government to strengthen Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education at the basic school level with increased investment to establish a stronger foundation for higher education and development.
The Association acknowledged significant efforts by successive governments to promote STEM education but observed that the approach had been lopsided, leaving basic schools to struggle.
Dr. Benjamin Aboagye, the President of the University of Cape Coast (UCC) Branch of the Association, said the basic school level had been largely neglected, with most schools lacking basic resources, which help to make STEM education more practical, easier, and fun.
Dr. Aboagye made the call when the UCC branch of the Association held a capacity-building workshop for 51 STEM teachers selected from 51 basic schools across the Ajumako-Enyan-Essiam District.
Facilitators from UCC took the teachers through pedagogical strategies for teaching STEM subjects to make them more interesting and practical.
The facilitators also sharpened the focus on electronics, a topic most of the participants found difficult to teach.
Dr. Aboagye, therefore, entreated the government to establish STEM resource centres for basic schools across the various districts where students could go and have practical experience with the curriculum to whip up their interest in reading science at a higher level.
“The government should move down from the second cycle to the basic level so that they, too, will have the practical knowledge and understanding of the science subjects so that when they get to the secondary level, they will know exactly what they are doing,” he said.
Dr. Aboagye explained that the training, held annually, was intended to discourage rote learning and encourage 21st-century teaching methods, which are more practical and engaging.
Mr. Mawuena Kofi Abotsi, the STEM coordinator for Ajumako District, said though the district was not doing badly in STEM, it was plagued with challenges, including the lack of resources and inadequate qualified teachers.
He noted that the practice of posting teachers without recourse to their areas of specialization in relation to the needs of the respective schools was a major challenge affecting STEM education in the district.
“Most teachers do not have qualifications in the subjects, but they are allowed to teach because of the lack of qualified trained science teachers,” he said.
“And so, they find some of the topics in the new curriculum quite difficult to teach.”
In some of the schools, the students have no idea about the apparatus they learned about in their books, Mr. Abotsi added.
He expressed gratitude to the Ghana Science Association for the training and appealed for more such gestures as well as resources to promote STEM education.
He also appealed to the government to reconsider the posting regime for teachers to ensure the right personnel were posted to areas where they were needed most.
Dr. Kofi Acheaw Owusu, Senior Lecturer, Department of Science Education, UCC, who facilitated the pedagogy session, urged teachers to make science interesting and fun to disabuse the minds of the students of the perception that science was difficult.
“Science is real, and it is all around us, so we should make sure that we use contextualized approaches to help learners feel and learn the science instead of teaching the theoretical aspects of it,” he said.
Dr. Owusu urged the teachers to adopt different teaching strategies to meet the needs of their diverse students.
He said the learner should be at the centre of the teaching process and must be engaged physically and cognitively.
He recommended field trips to make good use of the natural environment to make learning more relatable.
“Create an enabling and conducive environment for students to participate and share ideas freely,” he added.
Some participants who shared their experiences with the Ghana News Agency described the workshop as an “eye-opener” and pledged to implement all they had learned to the letter.
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