Teacher Educators’ and Teacher Trainees’ Perspective on Teacher Training for Sustainable Development

Abstract In accordance with Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4), countries across the globe are striving to ensure equitable access to inclusive, quality and lifelong educational opportunities for all children, youth and adults by 2030. Teacher education has been identified as one of the key factors in the achievement of the SDG 4 targets. As part of the effort to ensure sustainable teacher education for the achievement of SDG 4 in Ghana, this study applied the four key concepts in the SDG 4: quality, equity, inclusion and lifelong learning, to determine the progress with regards to SDG 4 in the context of teacher education in Ghana. The specific objectives of this study were to determine the inclusive pedagogical practices, values, and knowledge that trainees acquire from the Diploma in Basic Education’s Special Education Needs (SEN) course, the adequacy of the course for preparing teachers to create inclusive classrooms and the challenges associated with the delivery of the SEN course. In this study, 167 final-year trainees and 13 teacher educators from Diploma in Basic Education Program in three colleges of education in Ghana were surveyed about their views on the SEN teacher preparation course. The study found out that the SEN course placed much emphasis on medical model view of SEN and only a minority of trainees acquired the requisite inclusive knowledge, values and pedagogical practices. The paper discusses key barriers to the development of inclusive knowledge, pedagogical practices and values among trainees as well as factors that can promote the effective training of inclusive teachers.