Experimental Assessment of the Potency of Culturo-Techno-Contextual Approach in Enhancing Performance in Difficult Concepts in the Ghanaian Undergraduate Public Administration Curriculum
Creators: name: Awaah, Fred
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: 130299 Curriculum and Pedagogy not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Educational sciences

description: <em>Capacity deficit in public administration has been decried as one of the major challenges depressing growth and development in Africa. One of the strategic pathways for improving this capacity is the effective delivery of public administration in African university systems. Within this strategic framework is the need to ensure that students enrolled in public administration courses comprehend and perform maximally in these courses, regardless of their perceived difficulty levels, using a delivery method that is predisposing to effective learning. This is the problem that this study sought to solve within the Ghanaian undergraduate public administration curriculum. This study was conducted in two phases; the survey and the experimental phases. The survey phase ranked concepts in public administration perceived as difficult by Ghanaian students studying public administration, while the experimental phase examined the efficacy of the Culturo-Techno-Contextual Approach (CTCA) in aiding students to understand two of the perceived difficult concepts: politics and bureaucracy. The survey had </em>566<em> participants from three public universities and sought to (a) rank concepts perceived as difficult in the study of public administration in Ghanaian universities; (b) undertake an in-depth probe into the relationship among thirty-seven demographics and contextual variables and difficulties in the study of public administration; (c) rank the reasons for difficulties in the study of public administration. A total of 133 second-year diploma students studying public administration participated in the experimental phase of the study. The control group had 44 students, while 89 students comprised the experimental group. Politics was the concept first treated. The experimental group was taught using CTCA, while the control group used the traditional lecture method. The concept was taught in four lessons over two weeks. Bureaucracy was also taught to both groups using CTCA and traditional lecture methods within the same time frame as politics. The politics and bureaucracy achievement test (PABAT), which had 15 items on politics and 15 on bureaucracy was used to collect data. Since random assignment to experimental and control groups could not be achieved, the analysis of the covariance procedure was applied to the data with pre-test scores inserted as a covariate. The results showed that the experimental group (Mean=22.20 and SD=5.10) significantly outperformed the control (Mean=20.45 and SD=8.01) in politics and bureaucracy (p=.000). [F (1, 130) = 14.07; p=000]. The findings showed the potential of CTCA in improving undergraduatestudents’ performance in selected difficult concepts in public administration. Within the limitations of the study, especially the small sample size and experimental duration, the study recommends (a) exploratory use of CTCA for teaching public administration in undergraduate classes in the Ghanaian university system; (b) further probe of the variables which mediate the potency of CTCA; (c) further testing on larger samples of students in Ghana and other African countries. (d) adoption of the Awaah indigenous model for breaking learning difficulties in the study of public administration.</em>