Academic Staff of Dambai College of Education undergone 2-day Research and Publication Capacity Building Workshop

The Dambai College of Education Management has organized a two-day capacity-building workshop for its Academic Staff on research and publication. The workshop, which started on Friday 10th July 2020 and ended on Saturday 11th July 2020 took place in the Conference Hall of the Oti Regional Coordinating Council in Dambai.

It was targeted at building the capacity of all Academic Staff of the College to enable them to meet the current standard of academic research and publication for improvement in educational practices and specifically for their promotion.

The Principal of the College, Mrs Benedicta Awusi Atiku explained in her welcome address that Colleges of Education Act, Act 847 strongly advocates for research and publication by the Staff of Colleges of Education in their various specialized areas to inform practice for general improvement in the Colleges.

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The Principal also reiterated the call for research and publication which is mandatory in the promotion of the academic staff in all Colleges of Education in Ghana. “As such, the Management is poised on assisting the academic staff through a number of capacity building workshops to enhance their efforts in research and publication” she stated.

She further added that the recent workshop organized in February 2020 with Resource Persons from NCTE marked the beginning of such capacity-building training to make qualifications easy for the tutors in terms of promotions and the current training session form a continuation of such efforts by the College Management.

The two-day workshop was facilitated by a Senior Lecturer from the University of Education, Winneba, Dr Hinneh Kusiwho possesses vast knowledge in research and publication especially in qualitative research. Dr Kusi has published many research works to his credit and serves on various national and international boards.

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The training sessions addressed various aspects of conducting research; including research planning, methodological choices on ontology and epistemology, working within pragmatist method framework and writing for publication. The presentation had this outline:

1. General Introduction to Methodological Choices/Working within Interpretivist Qualitative Framework
2. Working within the Positivist Quantitative Framework
3. Working within the Pragmatist Mixed Method Framework
4. Writing for Publication: Part 1
5. Writing for Publication: Part 2
6. Scenarios on Research and Publication

The objective was to equip participants with tools for initiating, undertaking and publishing research works. Consequently, research skills for a range of academic writings including papers for publication, master’s dissertations, and doctoral proposals were covered. These were achieved through a mixed training methodology comprising lecture, discussion and group work.

On the issue of writing for publication, the resource person, Dr. Kusi stressed the need for the tutors to collaborate with one another to publish papers to enable them progress together. According to him, there should be collaboration among tutors but each tutor must indicate a specific role played in the research work.

The facilitator also mentioned that the papers should be first reviewed and proof-read by colleagues to avoid unnecessary mistakes.

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Besides, the resource person admonished the tutors to always prepare their research foci, which would provide guidelines on the topics, areas, and the time articles would be published. Participants were further counselled to use the knowledge and skills acquired from the workshop to further modify and refine their research projects.

To accomplish the critical goal of sustaining the new knowledge gained, Dr. Hinneh Kusi in his closing remarks encouraged tutors to make time for writing so that they can publish in very good journals, and this should be done at least, three times in a year if possible. He finally advised the participating tutors to get credible publishers with affordable prices for their research works.

In her closing remarks, the Principal of the college, Mrs. Benedicta Atiku thanked the resource person and his team for a good work done and all participants for their commitment, cooperation, contributions, and for making it to the end. She was happy that Dr. Hinneh Kusi had honoured the invitation to support the College tutors solve pertinent issues relating to their promotions which would serve as a motivation to all colleagues. She further added that “the College Management will continue using such programmes to build research capacity of tutors as it is committed to ensuring that both academic and non-academic staff progress fast in their various career paths”.