In Ghana, almost each year exam malpractice is recorded during the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) and West Africa Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE). This phenomenon has become a hard nut to crack. But, a constructive attempt at providing instructional clarity in schools has an impact on the issue.
Instructional clarity
Instructional clarity can be defined as a teacher’s capacity to deliver classroom instruction clearly and concisely (Maulana et al., 2016). It may be considered a parameter in judging the quality of teaching and learning. Almarode J., et al (2025), hint that clarity for learning is not simply a nice-to-have feature of good teaching – It’s foundational to what works best in teaching and learning. They add that it encompasses several interconnected dimensions:
Expectational clarity ensures students understand what success looks like and what evidence will show that learning has happened during the learning experience. This involves learning intentions, success criteria, examples, and evidence-generating strategies that make learning visible.
Directional clarity provides students with a clear understanding of learning goals, their progression through content, and the purpose behind what they’re learning. Examples can guide this direction by highlighting the essential aspects or attributes of the learning.
Procedural clarity helps students understand the processes and routines that structure their learning environment, from classroom procedures to assignment workflows. Learners are clear about when and how to practice.
Impact
To date, I remember that our basic school teachers, especially the mathematics teacher ensured that we understood clearly each topic even if he did not complete the syllabus. He believed that a topic well understood was better that all topics completed in a haste without clarity. Therefore, he adapted diverse strategies to explain lessons to our understanding. Indeed, this fostered clarity on all topics because we remembered them easily, explained the concepts thoughtfully, and confidently solved most mathematics questions. We wrote our final exams with so much confidence, never thought of cheating.
In Ghana, a walk through some pre-tertiary educational institutions may reveal that instructional clarity is missing in classrooms. When clarity is absent, learners may disengage and misbehave (Cothran et al., 2009). Specifically, while some learners struggle to study, others abandon class entirely.
The remaining simply memorize lessons and some parents complete their children’s homework for them, whiles colleagues’ complete assignments for fellow mates. Such learners are unprepared, anxious and afraid to sit for any exams and so they resort to malpractice in both formative and final exams. In fact, they may even shun the exams in anticipation of poor grades.
Tertiary institutions indulge too. Findings suggest that in Ghana, about 4.7 percent to 62.4 percent of students in higher educational institutions (HEI) have engaged in a type of academic dishonesty behaviour (Mensah & Azila-Gbettor, Citation2018; Mensah et al., Citation2016, Citation2018; Saana et al., Citation2016). Factors related to the teaching and learning process had been cited as contributing to the menace. These are; academic overload, poor cumulative grade point average, classroom environment etc. (Desalegn & Berhan, Citation2014; Iives et al., Citation2017; Klein et al., Citation2007; Kuntz & Butler, Citation2014; McCabe et al., Citation2001; Yu et al., Citation2017)
Conducive learning environment
Instructional clarity can be seen as a by-product of conducive learning environments. Elizabeth O. Ihekoronye (2020) emphasizes that conducive learning environments encompass all variables that influence students’ learning including classroom setting, teacher-student ratio, discipline, instructional materials, teacher-learner relationships and school level variables such as policies and community involvement.
Unfortunately, some schools fall short of these variables. Henceforth, it is difficult to attain instructional clarity. The school leadership then get anxious over learners’ performance in impending final exams and may resort to malpractices such as bribing invigilators, buying question papers etc to save the reputation of the school and their individual professional record.
In conclusion, Educators must resist the impulse to blame exam malpractice solely on learners’ unwillingness to study. Perhaps, lack of instructional clarity may be lurking. School leaders must regularly conduct lesson observations in classrooms to ensure instructional clarity. Remember, instructional clarity begets learning and learning begets performance.
BY Henry Atta Nyame
(hattanyame@gmail.com)
