Beyond Policy to Practice: Interface between School Feeding and Effective Early Childhood Instruction: Ghana's Experience

Abstract

This study is a descriptive research of the phenomenological approach where focus group discussion was used as an instrument to elicit perspectives of eight early childhood educators selected from early childhood centres benefiting from the Ghana school feeding program within the Winneba municipality on how they made connections between school feeding and instruction. The study was informed by a government of Ghana policy requiring connections between instruction and the Ghana school feeding program in the classroom. Guided by three research questions, the study revealed participants' naivety of any existing policy ion the area of school feeding -instructional connection, and also participation by educators in the program was "need be" basis. These notwithstanding, early childhood educators involved in the study were positive of the contribution of the Ghana school feeding program to pupils' enrolment and attendance to schools. The study made a number of recommendations regarding making connections between school feeding and instruction of which included; the sourcing of the Government of Ghana's policy on the relationship between school feeding and instruction by early childhood educators and positing themselves in the realization of this policy. Again, it was the recommendation of the study that an important policy such as school feeding should necessarily be incorporated in the curricula of early childhood education, and early childhood teacher training hence, steps must be taken in that direction.