Teachers’ Knowledge and use of Indoctrinatory Practices in Teaching Christian Religious Studies: A Study of Mission Schools in Central Region

Abstract

This study sought to unpack teachers‘ knowledge and use of indoctrinatory practices in the teaching of Christian Religious Studies in mission schools in the Central Region. The concurrent parallel mixed-method design was used. The population for the study was all CRS teachers and students from 19 mission schools within Central Region. The lottery method of simple random sampling was employed to select 320 students while the census method was used to get all 39 teachers of CRS in the schools. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25 was used to analyse data collected with the questionnaires and a structured observation guide as data collection instruments. Mission CRS teachers were found to have some idea of the term indoctrination. It is seen as imposing religious ideas on learners. Their participation in indoctrinatory practices was lowly. Mission school teachers were found to have high knowledge of the rationale as well as the content for teaching CRS. Again, there was no statistically significant difference in CRS teachers‘ participation in indoctrinatory practices based on their religious background. A weak positive non-significant association was found between CRS teachers‘ content knowledge and their knowledge of the rationale for CRS [r=.363, sig =.073]. It was recommended that the Central Regional Office of Education should team up with the Ghana Education Service (GES) to organise in-service workshops for teachers to deepen their understanding of the meaning of the term indoctrination. Again, the GES should encourage teachers to desist from any form of indoctrination. The Regional Directorate of Education should partner with GES to design programs for teachers to keep on upgrading themselves with the appropriate pedagogies. Finally, the Regional Directorate of Education and GES should motivate teachers to ensure that the content they teach aligns with the inherent logic of CRS.