Examining the extent of teachers’ awareness of the general objectives of teaching Social Studies in senior high school level in Ghana

Teaching and learning of Social Studies as a new discipline is faced by a number of challenges in Africa and particularly in Ghana. A study by Odada (1988) in Uganda demonstrated a basic problem in the teaching of Social Studies as the teachers were totally untrained or inadequately trained to handle the subject, before the inception of the subject into the school curriculum. According to Tamakloe (1985), lack of competent tutors in the Teacher Training Colleges in Ghana was a great challenge to the teaching of the subject.  He argued that most of the teachers who were handling the subject were not trained as Social Studies tutors but rather in other subject areas and this affected teachers produced to teach the subject in the basic schools. According to Merryfield and Mutebi (1991), teachers who were to handle the subject in the basic schools were not trained in Social Studies and also there were conflicts of traditional ideas of their various subjects with that of Social Studies might have accounted for the failure of the subject during the 1970’s.  This research however, sought to examine the extent of teachers’ awareness of the general objectives of teaching Social Studies in senior high school level in the Eastern Region of Ghana. A descriptive research design was used for this study. This involved collection of data concerning the subject under study