Smail, Amy; (2025) ‘Knowing your roots’: Primary school teachers’ understandings of citizenship and the role of African Indigeneity in Accra, Ghana. Research in Comparative and International Education , Article 17454999251359206. 10.1177/17454999251359206. (In press).

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Abstract

Ghana’s 2019 educational reform aims to instil in children a renewed sense of citizenship for deepening democracy and moving the nation out of poverty. These priorities are pertinent for primary schoolteachers in Ghana’s capital city, Accra, faced with the immediate challenge of reversing high youth unemployment, which is intensifying urban poverty. Based on interviews with 26 primary schoolteachers across three government schools, this study reveals how African Indigeneity, as part of these Ghanaian teachers’ Indigenous heritage, gave meaning to a more authentic, historic expression of citizenship in relation to their learners. Despite tensions around the inclusionary and exclusionary aspects of Indigeneity, as a key site of ethnic difference, these teachers sought to evolve it as a pedagogical tool for fostering unity in difference. The paper contends that foregrounding local epistemologies enables teachers to reinterpret citizenship in Accra, positioning them to reimagine their learners’ futures on their own African, Indigenous terms.

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