Experiences with an interactive teaching approach in a first year university physics course in Ghana
Year: 2012
Type: article
Abstract: It has been reported from many countries that the lecturing approach to physics teaching is little effective to attain deep conceptual understanding, and that interactive engagement approaches can be much more effective to attain such effect.Interactive engagement methods typically involve open and critical discussions in the classroom, with hand-on experiences and group work presentations.The question for this study is whether such techniques can be fruitfully implemented in the Ghanaian setting, where classroom resources are limited, and where politeness and respect towards the elderly are highly esteemed values.We investigated an interactive approach in a first year mechanics course in the Ghanaian university to find out about feasibility, student appreciation, and learning results.The outcome of the study shows that interactive teaching is feasible in Ghana and also results in improving students learning in mechanics concepts and quantitative problem solving.Some points on what to be taken into account for teaching in the interactive way are given. What is the problem?The predominant mode of physics teaching in most of Ghanaian schools places a heavy emphasis on lecturing, memorising definitions and formulas, and applying in standard problems.As a result, students are used to rote memorization of formulas and many students try to avoid questions that require qualitative reasoning and verbal explanations (Chief examiner, 2008).This traditional method of teaching by telling, does not help students to grow in their reasoning ability, which is reflected in the rather low ranking of Ghana's eighth graders (JHS 2) in the international comparison studies TIMSS (Martin, Mullis, Gonzalez & Chrostowski, 2004;Martin, Mullis, & Foy, 2008).In TIMSS 2003, Ghana's eighth graders in science took the 44 th position out of 45 countries that participated in the test, while Ghana's eighth graders were last in science out of the 48 countries that participated in 2007.Whereas students might be able to solve standard quantitative problems their lack of insight become most evident in test that do require qualitative insight, such as the Force Concept Inventory (Halloun & Hestenes, 1985).What do we learn from experiences elsewhere?Educational researchers have been establishing that allowing learners to take active part in the teaching and learning process is a key to improve students understanding and learning
Authors: Antwi, Elwin Savelsbergh, Harrie Eijkelhof
Language: English
Topic: Innovative Teaching Methods
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2619106901