TEACHERS’ TESTING PRACTICES OF ACHIEVEMENT TEST IN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLS IN THE SISSALA EAST MUNICIPALITY, GHANA

ABSTRACT The study sought to investigate achievement test practices of teachers in Junior High Schools in the Sissala East Municipality. Descriptive survey was used to investigate the practice of achievement testing of teachers in Junior High Schools in Sissala East Municipality. The study employed the multistage sampling techniques (purposive, stratified and simple random sampling technique). Questionnaire was used to collect data from 248 Junior High School teachers in the Sissala East Municipality. The results show that, Junior High Schools teachers in the Sissala East Municipality averagely adhere to most principles of test construction. The results again showed that, majority of the teachers in the Sissala East Municipality averagely adhere to test administration principles in their achievement test. The results gave evidence that most Junior High Schools teachers in the Sissala East Municipality have no good scoring skills and this always affect the achievement test scores. Furthermore, it was evident that most of the achievement test strategies were not used among Junior High Schools teachers in the Sissala East Municipality. The results also showed that there are numerous challenges that confront the use of achievement test among Junior High Schools teachers in the Sissala East Municipality. Large class size is one of the problems that most teachers complained of. The study concluded that teachers in the Sissala East Municipality were not well equipped with test construction, administration and scoring skills. It was recommended that more workshops and in-service training should be organized to teachers in Junior High Schools with respect to their testing practices (construction, administration and scoring of tests).