Abstract
his study evaluates the effectiveness of the teacher training programme, the Great Teaching Toolkit (GTT), on teaching practices in Ghanaian senior high schools. The GTT is an evidence-based framework developed by Evidence Based Education in the United Kingdom, with training provided through learning materials available on the GTT online platform. Teachers engage in self-directed learning using the materials and participate in weekly group discussions with peers.
Teachers in schools assigned to the treatment group receive access to a GTT platform learning dimension entitled “Activating Hard Thinking.” Within this dimension, teachers select one element from six—namely, Structuring, Explaining, Questioning, Interacting, Embedding, and Activating—for self-directed learning, with each teacher committing two hours per week to engage with the materials. A weekly study guide for the eight-week programme is provided.
The trial randomly selects treatment schools from a diverse group of public senior high schools located in rural, peri-urban, and urban areas across the Eastern Region of Ghana. A survey questionnaire on teaching practices is administered to teachers both before and after the intervention to measure changes in teaching practices. The control group of schools is only administered the survey questionnaire to elicit information on teaching practices, with no access to the GTT platform provided. The research aims to provide evidence on how evidence-based teacher training programmes can support improvements in educational quality within the context of expanded access to secondary education in Ghana.