Promoting Interactive Teaching with ICT: Features of Intervention for the Realities in the Ghanaian Physics Senior High School Classroom

Abstract

This research reports on the design aspect of a bigger project which sought to design and implement information and communication technology (ICT)-based interventions for the purpose of developing pre-service teachers’ ICT competency for teaching physics in an interactive manner using a three-stage (design stage, implementation and evaluation stage, and documentation and reflection stage) design-based research approach. Using literature as a lens, this research examines the interventions that we designed in the first stage of the project with the intent to determine its features that promote interactive teaching and fit the Ghanaian senior high school physics classroom context. Findings show that the intervention with inherent features comprising of: a readily available, sustainable, context- and content-specific ICT teaching and learning environment; an ICT-oriented knowledge base for teachers’ uptake of ICT; an underlining framework for defining interactive and learner-centred teaching approach with ICT; ICT-driven interactive lesson objectives; an inquiry-driven, activity- and ICT-based learning material; and a collaborative classroom arrangement is appropriate and sensitive to the needs of the Ghanaian physics classroom context and, hence, possess the potential for promoting interactive teaching. The features of the interventions, as situated in the specific context of the research and implications of the findings are discussed.