The response of art teachers in Ghana to Ghana's cultural policy

The focus of this research was to investigate the response of high school art teachers in Ghana to the country’s cultural policy of preserving Ghanaian cultural values. The study was done in Ghana by interviewing ten high school art teachers, conducting a survey of fifty high school art teachers, examining students’ projects, and taking a cursory look at the 2004 cultural policy document of Ghana. The theoretical frameworks were mainly based on post-colonialism and multicultural education, with a focus on the concepts of ambivalence, hybridity, globalization, and identity formation. The study involved a qualitative inquiry approach with some descriptive statistics to illustrate the context and picture of the data that reflect the responses of the participants on the preservation of cultural values. The major findings of the study reveal, (a) a support for the preservation of cultural values, while outmoded ones need to be abolished, (b) a call for a review of the cultural policy to meet changing demands of time, (c) that the cultural policy epitomizes a hybrid of both public and private ownership of cultural capital and practices, (d) that contemporary Ghanaian culture defines the curriculum and pedagogical practice of the art teacher with little impact from the cultural policy. These findings reflect a growing change in Ghanaian peoples’ values and identities in the educational landscape of Ghana. I recommend that a national discourse analysis be organized on the cultural policy of Ghana to further examine its relevance in relation to transformation in global technological and educational developments