Statistical Modeling Of Performance Of Teacher Education At Distance And Regular Modes

Abstract

This research looked at “Statistically Modeling Performance of pre-service teachers” by finding the differences in performance and perceptions if any, between students in the regular and distance modes of teacher education in university of Cape Coast. Pre-service teachers of Accra College of Education and the College of “Distance Education” at Papafio hills, both of university of Cape Coast were used as the population of the research. Students who were admitted in the year 2014/2015 academic year were sampled for the study. The total sample of four hundred and fifty five (455) was used for the study. Mixed method which involved the use of both quantitative data collection and qualitative follow-up of administering questionnaire were used in this study. Raw scores of English content, English methodology, Mathematics content, Mathematics methodology, Science content and science methodology were considered as dependent variables whereas category of learning mode with two levels-(regular and distance), was treated as the main independent variable. Variables like gender, age, prior knowledge in mathematics at Senior High level and others were treated as concomitant (blocking) variables. Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) and factor analysis were applied. Findings from this showed that differences in means of English content, English methodology, Mathematics content, Mathematics methodology, Science content and Science methodology with regard to category of learning mode were statistically significant with evidence of (p-value <0.001) for regular and distance category. It is therefore recommended that, policy makers should give similar attention if not the same to distance education just as it is done to the regular colleges of Education, so that the differences in performance gap can be closed in the near future.