EARLY CHILDHOOD TEACHERS’ PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY IN MFANTSEMAN MUNICIPALITY IN THE CENTRAL REGION OF GHANA

ABSTRACT 

The purpose of the study was to examine the perceptions of early childhood teachers’ professional identity in the Mfantseman Municipality in the Central region of Ghana. The study adopted concurrent mixed method design using identical samples for both quantitative and qualitative data. The target population for this study comprised all Kindergarten teachers in the Mfantseman municipality. The census sampling procedure was employed to sample 182 early childhood teachers for the study.  Questionnaire with some open-ended questions were used to gather data. The quantitative data were analysed through the computation of descriptive and inferential statistics such as frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations, independent samples t-test, and ANOVA, using the SPSS. Qualitative data were analysed thematically using Atlas. ti 7.5.17. The study revealed that the level of teacher professional identity was high. It emerged from the study that contextual factors influencing early childhood teachers’ professional identity were related to school environment, lack of recognition, social regard, nature of the school administrators, and nature of working environment. The study revealed that early childhood services face challenges related to the unprestigious nature of the occupation; low remuneration, lack of infrastructure, teaching learning materials, and attitude of parents. The data also suggested that professional development like higher education; experience and professional exposure influenced their professional identity. It was concluded that early childhood teachers’ identity levels were high and were also influenced by contextual factors stemming from school environment, societal perception, individual preferences, remuneration and lack of logistics. The following conclusions were drawn based on the findings of the study: The study concluded that generally, early childhood teachers’ identity levels were high on all the four indictors: professional knowledge, professional values, professional skills and reflective practice.  The study recommended that the Mfantseman educational directorate in collaboration with the sampled school authorities should organise comprehensive in-service training programmes on professional knowledge, professional values, professional skills and reflective practice to establish it influence in their teacher professional identity to equip teachers to develop positive professional identity.