Pre-Service Social Studies Teachers’ Assessment Literacy in Ghana: A Convergent Triangulation Inquiry

The study explored how a convergent triangulation mixed-methods design promotes, challenges, and yields a convergent understanding of pre-service Social Studies teachers’ assessment literacy research in a resource-constrained and high-stakes examination environment at the Senior High School (SHS) level in Ghana. The study employed the convergent mixed-methods design grounded in pragmatism. The study was influenced by Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, the Teacher Assessment Literacy in Practice (TALiP) framework of Xu and Brown, and Greene’s dialectical stance (DS). Using a mixed-purposeful sampling technique, 76 final-year Bachelor of Arts (B. A) in Social Studies Education pre-service teachers at the University of Education, Winneba were selected for the study. Data collection was done using a validated questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, and video-recorded classroom observations. Ferretti et al.’s merging strategy was employed to guide data integration alongside Onwuegbuezie and Johnson’s legitimation framework. The study revealed notable discrepancies between self-reported (questionnaire results) and observed (interview and observation results) assessment literacy (AL). The majority, 7 (70%) of participants demonstrated limited formative assessment practices during lessons, although 85% of them reported high levels of assessment competence. The convergent triangulation design proved valuable in uncovering the discrepancy between theory and practice, revealing the multi-dimensional nature of the pre-service teachers’ assessment literacy (TAL), and producing meta-inferences that neither quantitative nor qualitative approaches alone could yield. The findings, therefore, emphasise the need for context-driven professional development and policy interventions to promote pre-service teachers’ assessment literacy in Ghana.