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.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | ‘Knowing your roots’: Primary school teachers’ understandings of citizenship and the role of African Indigeneity in Accra, Ghana |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1177/17454999251359206 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1177/17454999251359206 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s) 2025. Creative Commons License (CC BY 4.0) This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10214153 |
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