Shifting teachers’ practice in early mathematics classrooms in Ghana

Abstract

Changing teachers’ practice is difficult, especially in low- and middle-income contexts (LMIC). Recently, with attention turning to improving early mathematics in addition to reading outcomes, donors, governments, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are grappling with the design of mathematics interventions and supportive policies. However, there is limited evidence showing how to change teachers’ practices in early mathematics classrooms in LMIC. For this exploratory study, the authors provided 15 kindergarten teachers in Ghana with sequenced mathematics activities, with some teachers receiving low-cost manipulatives (e.g., bottle-cap counters and number cards), and other teachers being asked to create or gather their own. The findings showed that teachers who were given the manipulatives were much more likely than teachers not given the manipulatives to use the activities provided. In addition, the character of the instruction was qualitatively different for teachers who were given the manipulatives. These results, while exploratory, suggest the need for classroom sets of manipulatives when designing an intervention that aims to change teachers’ practices.