Examining the Impact of UCC Administered End of Semester English Examinations on the Teaching Practices of English Specialism Tutors in Foso College of Education

: The study found out that at the beginning of every semester, tutors sell course handouts which are examination-oriented with a lot of past questions to the pre-service teacher on which the latter becomes over-reliant for their preparation towards examination. These factors, the study observed, have made tutors pedagogy tilted from TPCK deliveries to examination preparation activities with little or no emphasis on equipping the pre-service teacher with lesson facilitation and class management strategies. This is gradually killing the college tutors’ innovations in the Lecture Theatres which reflects on a statistically significant difference in the impact of end of semester examination among year 1, year 2 and year 3 English language specialism students. It was concluded that UCC administered End of semester examination as a high-stakes test influences teaching and learning negatively as pre-service teachers focus more on passing examination than equipping themselves with pedagogical practices for the delivery of the SBC Curriculum in the basic schools of Ghana. It was therefore recommended that UCC should consider integrating pedagogy with content questions to promote positive or beneficial impact on teaching and learning. Also, principals of UCC affiliated colleges should put measures in place to strengthen Teacher Professional Learning Sessions (TPLS) in their individual colleges, for it provides a fine opportunity for staff and pre-service teacher development


INTRODUCTION
There is no educational system without assessment because assessment has been an integral component of education as long as education has survived. Educational assessment ranges from assessment for, as and of learning, otherwise known as formative and summative assessments, (Dunn & Mulvenon, 2009) and impacts on teaching, textbooks, learning and the whole educational system. (Gipps, 2011). Formative assessment (for) is embedded in the teaching and learning process while summative, known as the assessment of learning, taking the form of external examination, is administered at the end of program to examine learners' overall performances on a program or a course and for promoting curriculum change (Black & Wiliam, 2012). Havnes (2004) asserted that the power of assessment to influence learning is observed in the role examination plays as the most useful academic exercise whetting the desire for learning and modifying teaching in required ways to improve students 'learning (Popham, 2005;Resnick & Resnick, 2009). However, it is asserted that external assessment tends to have negative effects as it is limited to the cognitive domain and extend to sociological issues relating to power, social class and race relations and equal opportunities in a subtle manner (Amrein & Berliner, 2002;Broadfoot & Pollard, 2000;Gipps, 2011). For this reason, the Anamuah-Mensah Committee Report, (2002) advocated 'it is recognised that the type of assessment employed by the system dictates the type of pedagogy used by teachers … Assessments of this nature take the form of high-stakes examinations which carry consequences for the students, their teachers or schools … and so this system of assessment should be scrapped off.' In the Ghanaian context, Initial Teacher Education Institutions, (ITEIs) now satellite campuses of the five traditional universities, take end of semester examinations as external high-stakes examinations that are moderated by the mentoring universities, in the case of Foso, University of Cape Coast for the grading system, certification and honouring of first class students and GTEC for licensing to practice. These examinations are the overriding preoccupation of teachers, students, parents and other stakeholders (Anane, 2010) due to their role of determining the quality of teaching and learning in colleges as well as the informing the quality of facilitator a student will be. (Heubert, 2000). The recent curriculum review for ITEIs for example, shows how powerful examination outcomes, not professional practice, remains an intimidating force in shaping public opinions about the good standards and accountability of education (Anane, 2015;Amoako, 2019). Gradually, national assessments are being openly or secretly linked to policies that hold school systems, teachers and administrators and the students themselves accountable for students' performance (Anane, 2007). Students' scores on national tests are, for example, reported in newspapers and other media as a matter of public accounting to determine which college is best usually through league systems. This has accumulated a lot of pressure and stress for pre-service teachers and the school systems to perform on these tests (Grant, 2002).at the unfortunate neglect of the unexamined pedagogical practices which is what actually makes a teacher. Applications to the colleges are informed by the quality of the college system based on the examination and not how the products thereof perform on their special fields.

Purpose of the Study
The main purpose of the study was to examine the impact of end of semester examinations on teaching and learning of courses in Foso College of Education in the Central Region.
Specifically, the study seeks to: 3. How has end of semester examinations impacted positively or negatively on the facilitation strategies of English specialism tutors in Foso College of education?

Significance of the study
The study on the impact of UCC administered end of semester English examinations on the teaching practices of English specialism tutors in Foso College of Education could provide GTEC, mentoring universities, college administrations, pre-service teachers and other stakeholders with data for one comprehensive purpose.
The findings of the study will draw the attention to the stakeholders involved that pre-service teachers by the nature of their academic experiences, are over-obsessed with fashioning their learning after the trend of examination questions, hence since college curriculum content knowledge alone has no direct bearing to and no specialism intent for the delivery of SBC at the pre-tertiary institutions, test developers' evaluations should embed pedagogical knowledge with content knowledge in test items to better assess the goals and objectives of the broader curriculum implemented through college facilitation, to better equip the pre-service teachers holistically for their specialism facilitation practices.

Delimitation
End of semester examinations impacts various facets of ITE programs which need equally extensive discussions but the study was delimited to only the impact of UCC administered end of semester English examinations on the teaching practices of English tutors. All specialism tutors have valuable information to share on the subject, but again the study was delimited to only English specialism tutors. Also this impact is felt in all UCC Satellite college campuses but the study was conducted in only Foso College of Education. The justification for the choice of the college and specialism course was that, the researcher is an English facilitator in the college and she had had the opportunity to observe and experience at grassroots' level how English tutors, are gradually compromising on their TPCK facilitations over the years to respond to the trend of end of semester examinations questions. Again, because of proximity and convenience, as this study is carried out amidst intensive college expectations, and the healthy rapport established among colleagues and the pre-service teachers, no grievous challenges are expected to occur during her interactions with colleague tutors and students to find out how end of semester English examinations, selections of overall best students and the league table had influenced TPCK facilitation. Again, because this study is the first of its kind in relation to the new 4 Year B. ED Curriculum, it is imperative to start from a comfort zone in order to learn more about the perceived subject.

Limitations
The major limitation of the study was the relatively small sample size of 3 English specialism tutors in the college which may pose a difficulty in generalising the findings to the population of English specialism tutors in UCC affiliated colleges in Ghana. Again, the 22 third year English specialism student respondents as a sample size, the same generalization limitations might be experienced.

Definition of Terms
High-Stakes Testing: It is an assessment to which important consequences such as school rating and judging teacher quality are attached to the result. Teaching to Test: Teaching based solely on content or material that is to be examined or tested. League System: Ranking of colleges based on their percentage performances in the totality of all examinations taken. Validity: This refers to the extent/degree to which evidence and theory support the interpretations of test scores entailed by proposed uses of tests.

Preparing the English specialism tutor for the delivery of 4 year B.ED Curriculum for ITEIs?
It can confidently be asserted that college tutor preparation is well established in the country in connection with implementing the new curriculum. Tutors were prepared for the implementation  (3) hours a week be dedicated to engaging pre-service facilitators in enactments to achieve pedagogical knowledge. The ITE curriculum, implemented in the 2018/2019 academic year made college tutors aware of the need to reflectively ponder and question how their practices equip pre-service facilitators with Technological Knowledge, Pedagogical Knowledge and Content Knowledge, first in isolation and then integrated into TPACK for professional achievements in life. It is a well-known educational adage that the 'thinking facilitator' requires three important attributes to be reflective; 1. 'Open-mindedness' to new ideas and thoughts; 2. 'Wholeheartedness' to seek out fresh approaches and fully engage with them; and 3. 'Responsibility' to be aware of the consequences of one's own actions.
The college English specialism tutor was therefore prepared to deliver pedagogical content knowledge which required that pre-service teachers be given opportunities to demonstrate what they will do differently at each stage of a tutor's lesson delivery during actual lecture hall facilitation. These experiences assisted them to sharpen their teaching skills (Chisholm, 1994, Darling-Hammond, 2010, Wang, Lin, Spalding, Klecha & Odell, 2011.) The emphasis therefore was to consciously use and discuss pedagogical practices, making student-teachers practice these strategies and discussing their suitability for teaching similar substrands at the basic schools. College tutors played a pivotal role in influencing new facilitators' philosophies of teaching and instructional practices and sometimes their decision to continue in the teaching profession (Duquette 1994). As student facilitators seek to understand the language of the profession and the various facets of teaching, school placement facilitators serve as mentors (Stanulus & Russell, 2000), who have a strong influence on the student facilitators' decisions regarding the implementation of the curriculum, teaching strategies, classroom management and professional decisions (Anderson, 2007, Ferrier-Kerr, 2009). As student-teachers access the Supported Teaching in Schools component of their training, having experienced some pedagogical practices in the college classroom, reports on the pretertiary facilitators' professional practices, which are submitted to college tutor supervisors for indepth discussions and grading. Again, the college tutor was trained to observing third year students' in-college embedding teaching and fourth year students in-school establishing teaching. Occasionally, professional bodies from GTEC, T-TEL, Accreditation board and MoE visit colleges and sit in tutors lesson to examine how they satisfy all the demands in the implementation of the new 4 year B.ED curriculum in the college classroom and how this will impacts professionally on student-facilitators' facilitation of English substrands in the basic schools in Assin during establishing teaching. The post reflection discussions between the tutor and these personnel are characterized by emphasizing more pedagogy than content. As if that were not enough, the initiative taken by the Ministry of Education to maintain the requirement of establishing teaching for final year student-facilitators of all Initial Teacher Education Institutions to qualify them as facilitators, is a laudable one as this can be used to improve professional reflective practice, on the part of college tutors, to examine how their practices in the college system have professional impact on how the student-facilitators facilitate in their placement schools. Thus, the college English specialism tutors' preparation for the delivery of the 4 Year B. Ed curriculum was geared towards facilitating more pedagogical knowledge than content knowledge.

The relationship between end of semester examinations and the specifications for English facilitations
The Ed. curriculum is designed to produce teachers who have passion for teaching and leadership, are reflective practitioners, and who 'engage with members not only in the school community but also in the wider community, and act as potential agents of change' (p. 14). Some of the characteristics of this curriculum are developmental, progressive, concurrent and value driven.
(NTECF p16) With these as guiding principles, it is expected that tutors' pedagogy, course handouts and end of semester examinations aim at providing professional training comprising a combination of appropriate pedagogy and content to prepare the student-teacher to be clear and concise, to be able to manage the learning environments and be innovative. Examination should reflect the syllabus and curriculum, and since not everything in a curriculum can be tested in an examination, the areas that are assessed should be ones that are considered important. It is also important that, same items and contents should not be tested again and again. Insofar as possible, modes of testing (e.g., written, practical, oral) should be diverse to reflect the goals of curricula. The format and contents of the public examination should be reorganized every year. The use of commercially produced clone tests materials in the class should be discouraged. Teaching to the test universally occurs in either the practice of frontloading or backloading. If a high match exists between the curriculum and the test, teaching to the test is inevitable and desired. Otherwise, the data produced by the test is not useful in improving teaching and learning. In this case, using tests as the source to develop curriculum runs the risk of accepting and defining learning only in terms of what is tested in the test.
In the college systems in Ghana, it was observed that college tutors, at the initial stages satisfied their requirement by facilitating pedagogical content knowledge with the use of the language of the new curriculum as specified in the broad curriculum but course coordinators' notes, handouts and end of semester examinations are only content focused and unfortunately, some important areas of the curriculum are not assessed at all.

The Impact of end of semester examinations on the facilitation strategies of English specialism tutors in Foso College of Education.
The English Specialism Curriculum for all grade level specialisms provides a focus for lesson deliveries and sets goals for the student-teachers throughout their study. Test contents on the other hand, have a direct effect on teaching curricula, pedagogy and learning (Alderson & Wall, 1993). Curriculum alignment is a process to improve the match between the formal instruction that often occurs in the classroom and the instrument that is used to measure the instruction outcomes. End of semester examinations in Foso College of Education exert a considerable impact on what, and how, teaching and learning are conducted in the Lecture Theatres. For English specialism tutors, the introduction of the college league table had had an impact on their facilitation strategies, which now lead to teaching to the test, as they desire for their specialism students, especially, to achieve high scores for the fear of poor results, and the associated guilt, shame, or embarrassment, (Alderson and Wall, 1993). There is a considerable narrowing of the curriculum, as the years go by, as tutors and student-teachers concentrate more on the content parts of the curriculum at the expense of pedagogy because the trend of end of semester question, which tutors were made to believe will focus more on practicum than theory, rather emphasizes content with little or no feel of pedagogy since the implementation of the new curriculum. (Wall 2012, p. 79). This trend has a negative impact on the way tutors deliver instructions and also on the quality of curriculum materials as tutors design their handouts with a lot of past questions and the content hovering around the course coordinators' notes focusing on end of semester examination questions. The English specialism tutor's practices in relation to English Education curriculum reform urged the use of TPACK skills equally, but because the end of semester examination emphasized testing the knowledge of content only, the content of teaching, course materials and the way tutors deliver instruction are compromised. Again, because almost all the tutors have been included one way or the other in the examinations processes, they tend to marginalize the skills, failing to implement their instruction as recommended by the curriculum because the most influential factor was the quality of passes of student-teachers. Again, apart from pedagogy which is not tested, a very important area like composition, since three years ago, has also not been assessed because it attracts more days for marking, which in turn have to be paid for, probably causing an overbudgeting to institute. Again, because the B.Ed program is assessed by sandwich and distance students, who by virtue of their crushed semester program, cannot be assessed in composition, for the sake of uniformity, all UCC affiliated colleges, no matter the program, are not to be assessed in that substrand.

RESEARCH METHODS
The study sought to examine the impact of end of semester examinations on the teaching practices of English specialism tutors in Foso College of Education. This chapter explains how the study was conducted. It covers the research design, population, sample and sampling procedure, instruments, data collection, data analysis and ethical consideration.

Research Design
The descriptive survey was used to make inferences about the impact of end of semester examination on the teaching practices of English Specialism tutors in Foso College of Education because it is versatile and practical, especially to the researcher in that they identify present needs.

Population
The population was all English specialism tutors and year three English specialism students of Foso College of Education. The justification for the population was that the first batch of students who accessed the new curriculum had a very appreciable experience with tutors on pedagogical strategies though their end of semester examinations did not address them. Presently, they are writing their final end of semester examination and should therefore not be bothered. The first and second years are on holiday and besides, they came in when the trend of pedagogical content deliveries have been compromised to teaching to test. The present third years, who accessed the pedagogical content deliveries at the initial stages and have observed the gradual change in tutors facilitations are the best to give the needed information.

Sample and Sampling Technique
Purposive sampling was used to involve all the 3 English specialism tutors and 22 year three English specialism student-teachers. .

Data Collection Instruments
The instrument used in the study was an adapted questionnaire from University of Cape Coast https://erl.ucc.edu.gh/jspui Digitized by Sam Jonah Library

Validity and Reliability
Because the questionnaire had been used for a related work, it is assumed that validity and reliability had been tested and approved

Data Collection Procedure
The questionnaires were distributed to both tutors and student-teachers and the instructions to the questionnaire and the items were carefully explained to them on the 10th and 13th of October, 2022. Students were given thirty (30) minutes to respond to the questionnaire while tutors were asked to respond to the instruments within two days and hand it over to the head of departments.

Data Analysis Procedure
The closed-ended type of questions was used and respondents were expected to respond to all the items. All items on both questionnaires were weighted as 4, 3, 2, 1 for strongly agree, agree, disagree and strongly disagree respectively. The responses to the questionnaires were coded, edited and scored for the analysis using the research questions and the hypothesis.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of end of semester examinations on the teaching practices of English specialism tutors in Foso College of Education, Central Region This chapter deals with the discussion and analysis of the findings that have emerged from the data collected by means of questionnaire. Tables are provided to illustrate and support the findings. Frequency distribution tables with percentages were constructed. The presentation of results was done in the order in which research questions and the hypothesis were presented in Chapter one.

Analysis of Background Data
This section of the chapter presents the analysis of the background data of the respondents.

Overview
The study was conducted to find out the impact of end of semester examinations on the teaching practices of English specialism tutors in Foso College of Education in the Central Region of Ghana. Three specialism tutors and 22 third year specialism student-teachers were involved in answering a series of questionnaire meant to seek information. Specifically, the study aimed at finding out the perceived impact of end of semester examinations on tutors' classroom instructional practices, the content of curriculum and handouts prepared by course tutors. Also, on the part of students, the study sought to find out the perceived impact of end of semester examinations on their perception, learning strategies and techniques, and attitude towards course handouts. Purposive sampling technique was used for the study. The descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. A 28-item questionnaire was the instrument used for data collection from tutors and a 30item questionnaire was used to collect data from student-teachers.

Tutors
1. The study found out that test preparation activities have dominated tutors' classroom engagements. 3. It was also revealed that tutors adopted teaching methods that made them taught to test. 4. The study revealed that tutors internal quizzes were influenced with content and format of end of semester examination. 5. It was found out that tutors have narrowed the content of the curriculum. 6. It was also identified that tutors prepared test-oriented materials flooded with past questions. 7. The study revealed that end of semester examinations had encouraged tutors to teach more content rather than being innovative with teaching strategies.

Students
1. The study revealed that student-teachers held negative and positive perceptions about end of semester examinations. 2. The study found out that these perceptions held by student-teachers have reflected in their learning. 3. The study also found out that student-teachers have narrowed the content of curriculum they learn. 4. It was found out that student-teachers relied on handouts flooded with past questions produced by course tutors 5. The study also revealed that end of semester examinations have made student-teachers relent on all efforts to studying and practicing strategies of teaching and adopted appropriate and inappropriate learning strategies and techniques to improve their scores. 6. The study revealed that end of semester examinations had encouraged student-teachers to learn.

Conclusion
The study investigated the impact of end of semester examinations on the teaching practices of English specialism tutors in Foso College of Education. It could therefore, be concluded that end of semester examinations have an influence on teaching and learning. It is evident from the study that End of semester examinations influence what teachers teach.
End of semester examinations influence the the preparation of course handouts.
End of semester examinations influence the degree and depth of teaching.
End of semester examinations influence attitudes to the content, method, etc. of teaching and learning.

Recommendations
The following recommendations are made based on the findings of the research for policy and practice.
1. TPLS should be strengthened and certificates of attendance and participation given to deserving student-teachers. 2. Tutors should have CPDs on the relevance of providing quality professional opportunities to student-teachers. This will help tutors to teach the broad curriculum to achieve real students' growth and learning, not just 'teaching to the test' skill acquisition. 4. Course coordinators should consider other forms of testing to promote positive or beneficial impact on pedagogy also.

Suggestion for Future Research
The following are recommended for future research: 1.The study should be replicated to find out the impact of end of semester examinations on the teaching and learning in English in other UCC satellite campuses for synchronization.
2.A replication of the study in colleges monitored by other universities would be useful to determine if similar results will surface for English Specialism tutors.
3.A replication of the study in the pre-tertiary institutions to examine the impact of BECE AND WASSCE on teaching practices on teachers could be equally beneficial.