Teachers' and students' perception of and attitude towards the religious and moral education programme in selected senior secondary schools in the Upper East region of Ghana

Abstract

This study was conducted to find out teachers' and students' perception of and attitude towards the religious and moral education programme in senior secondary schools in the Upper-East Region of Ghana. The sample for the study consisted of 344 respondents comprising 50 teachers and 294 students. Purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used to select the participants for the study. Six research questions and two hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. Two sets of questionnaire: one for teachers and the other for students was the research instrument used. The internal reliability co-efficient of the teachers' questionnaire and students' questionnaire were .80 and .61 respectively. The Independent sample t-test, frequencies and percentages were the main statistical tools used in the analysis of the data. The study established that (1) a majority (62.0%) of senior secondary schools RME teachers in the Upper- East Region had favourable perception of RME; (2) a majority (66.3%) of students in senior secondary schools in the Upper East Region had favourable perception of RME; (3) a greater number (60.0%) of senior secondary school teachers in the Upper East Region had favourable attitude towards RME; and (4) a considerable number (71.8%) of students in senior secondary schools in the Upper East Region had unfavourable attitude towards RME. The major challenges of teaching RME in senior secondary schools in the Upper East Region were that (1) 62.0%of the teachers stated inadequacy of other instructional materials apart from textbooks and that (2) 56.0% of the teachers stated the lack of in-service training for teachers. The study also unveiled the challenges of learning RME in senior secondary schools in the Upper-East Region. These were that (1) 72.0% of the students stated inadequate students' textbooks and that (2) 69.0% of the students stated inadequate teaching and learning resources apart from textbooks. The recommendations included the following: (1) The need to provide a conducive teaching and learning environment to sustain the positive perception that students have about RME; (2) the need to put in an implementation process so that students will develop positive attitude towards RME ; (3) the need to organise in-service training courses for RME teachers in senior secondary schools; (4) provision of instructional materials apart from textbooks for effective teaching and learning of RME; and (5) adequate provision of students' textbooks.