Dr (Mrs.) Felicia Kafui Etsey is a Language, Literacy and Developmental Reading expert and has expert knowledge in dealing with cross-cutting issues in the field of Early Childhood and Elementary Education (Basic School, KG-JSS). Dr Etsey has rich experience in Curriculum development, use of effective constructivist pedagogy, approaches and instructional strategies that promote learning in Early Childhood and Basic Schools. She has seasoned knowledge in the development of Standardized and Authentic Assessment for classroom instruction. She acquired the above mentioned rich background knowledge, experiences and skills in teaching and research from the College of Education, Division of Curriculum and Instruction, the University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA and the University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast.
Dr Kafui Etsey acquired her undergraduate background knowledge as a professional
Teacher-educator of Language, Mother-tongue and Culture from the School of Languages, Ajumako and University of Cape Coast. As a determined and hard-working teacher, who always aimed at the sky as her limit, she continued her education at The University of Iowa, Iowa City in the USA, where she pursued her graduate programmes. She got her Master’s Degree in 1998 in Early Childhood and Elementary Education (KG-BS 9), specializing in the teaching of Developmental Reading and her PhD degree in December 2004 in Language, Literacy and Culture. Her expert knowledge in the areas of Early Childhood and Elementary (Basic) Education is very rich and commendable. As a Language and Literacy expert, a professional teacher-educator and a Reading Clinician, Kafui has expert knowledge in the teaching of Reading especially helping children who are struggling to read, English as a Second Language instruction and learning, Mother-tongue literacy and issues related to integrating Culture into language learning. Dr. Etsey has a fund of knowledge in the teaching of all aspects of Language and Literacy including Reading, Writing, and Children’s literature. Felicia’s graduate work exposed her to both Quantitative and Qualitative research methods as evidenced in her final dissertation and in some of her research publications. Research Methods was one of the courses she taught for several years as a Lecturer in the Department of Basic Education, University of Cape Coast.
Dr Kafui Etsey acquired additional hands-on learning experiences from the professional development courses she took in the University of Iowa, USA and different countries. To improve on her knowledge about Early Childhood Education especially the developmental stages from birth to five years, Kafui took an Independent Study in Early Childhood for the whole of Spring 2004. As part of this course, Dr Etsey had opportunities of visiting and learning from different Early Childhood centres and Elementary schools in Iowa City. She had several opportunities to travel to different countries where she was exposed to many pre-school classroom and learning environments in United Kingdom, Australia and Israel. She was part of the team sponsored by the Ministry of Education to United Kingdom to study UK classrooms. Furthermore, in June 2011, Kafui had the opportunity to participate in the Australian Leadership (ALA) Fellowship Programme as a Visiting Scholar to Monash University, Australia, where she strengthened her research knowledge in qualitative research in Early Childhood and also learnt from different classrooms. Dr Felicia Kafui Etsey had another opportunity with the support of an Israeli Scholarship and attended the MASHAV training in the Innovative methods for an Integrated Approach in Teacher Training with emphasis on Early Childhood and Primary Education in Haifa, Israel in 2012.
Felicia has over thirty-four years rich teaching experiences of teaching children and students of different ages. Dr. Etsey taught at different grade levels in the Ghana Education Service (school system) such as lower primary, Middle and Junior High school classrooms, and secondary schools. She served as a Graduate Teaching assistant in the teaching of the courses “Reading and Writing Processes and Instruction” and “Children’s Literature”. She also served as a supervisor of undergraduate practicum students who were participating in the field experiences (teaching practice) in the Elementary Education programme. As part of the teaching assistantship in the Division of Curriculum and Instruction in the University of Iowa, Felicia acquired skillful international experience in teaching and supervision of undergraduate and graduate student-teachers in the Summer Reading Programme. She acquired experiences in how to organize weekly seminars, assess, conduct one-on-one conferences with student teachers, and write letters of recommendation to deserving ones. She has a rich international experience in college classroom teaching which began from the University of Iowa, USA. On her return to Ghana, she lectured in the University of Cape Coast for sixteen years before her retirement from the University.
While in the University, she taught many Education and Literacy courses including Research methods, Early literacy, Fundamentals of Teaching Reading and Integrated approaches of Teaching Literacy. Dr Etsey is particularly interested in conducting research into the reading and writing problems of struggling readers and identifying a variety of best practices and techniques that can support them to read and write. Dr Kafui Etsey has been a module writer and chief examiner for English Methodology and other modules for UCC Distance Education programmes.
Dr Felicia Etsey contributed significantly and immensely as a consultant to most of the local, national and international Literacy projects and interventions that were introduced to the Ghanaian schools between 1999 to 2018. Dr Kafui Etsey worked as a consultant to many of the international NGO on local projects such as GTZ, EQUALL, DFID, USAID and GILBT. A few of the activities she was involved in were: the development of content, writing and reviewing of Ghanaian Language Pupils’ books and Teachers’ Guides for Primary Schools in Ghana, a project sponsored by ASTEP/GTZ (A German Technical Organization). As part of the consultancy, she travelled to Uganda with the German original team to support the BEUPA Curriculum Development project in Kampala to write their local language reading books. She participated in the WSDP program and the Molteno Breakthrough to Literacy (BTL) and Breakthrough to English (BTE) projects.
Dr. Etsey worked as a consultant for EQUALL and Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC, on the culture of reading program. She was involved in organizing and facilitating many activity-based-learning (ABL) interventions workshops for the ASTEP mother tongue instruction(GTZ) project, the Culture of Reading programme in the South Tongu district for pre-service and in-service teachers (beginning and professional teachers). Dr Etsey was involved in the final evaluation of the QUIPS program. Working with EQUALL, a USAID-funded non-governmental organization, she actively participated in other projects supported by USAID such as developing and dissemination workshops on Standards and Milestones for the North and South zones in Ghana, in-service training for teachers, and developing of teaching materials for elementary schools. Again, she was one of the key team members and facilitators who worked in the planning of content, writing and reviewing of the National Literacy Programme (NALAP) materials and the revised integrated approach to Literacy Pupil’s textbooks and facilitators’ guides for children in the early years classrooms in Ghana. Kafui was one of the strong Project Technical advisors (PTA) behind the Integrated Approach of Teaching Literacy, a project supported by the USAID and University of Chicago and GES- Ghana
Dr Kafui Etsey’s most recent consultancy was her work as a Senior Reading Specialist with the GILLBT and USAID Partnership for Education: Learning activity for three years. . The 5-year Ghana Learning intervention supports the Ministry of Education and Ghana Education Service (MOE/GES) to improve performances in reading for pupils in Kindergarten to Primary 2. She has been one of the lead national facilitators and trainers. This consultancy work took Dr Etsey to many regions and cities in Ghana, from the south to Tamale and Yendi in the North for the training workshops for teachers. These teachers were trained in the use of a systematic phonics-based reading programme developed by the Learning activity. She delivered the training sessions via face to face and through E-learning media.
Dr Etsey was the team leader in the development of the Kindergarten 1 and 2 Integrated Curriculum. Her research interests focus on reading difficulties of second language learners (ELL), mother-tongue instruction, best practices and strategy instruction in language and literacy learning in the early years’ classroom, helping to improve reading comprehension and writing instruction of English language learners in the early year’s classrooms of Ghana.
Dr. Etsey attended many local and international conferences such as CIES, IRA and international Literacy Association conferences to present research papers.
Dr. Etsey’s objectives as a teacher-educator are to support and provide teachers of Early Childhood Care Centers and Elementary Schools (KG-BS 9) with quality education with emphasis on all aspects of Language and Literacy instruction. Her interest and zeal is to provide teachers with appropriate methods, strategies, techniques and best practices that will promote the learning of English as a Second Language, all aspects of literacy, word recognition, reading comprehension and all other components of reading.
Dr Felicia Kafui Etsey’s love and passion for children in the early years and her excitement to build a strong foundation for them pushed her to start a new Day Care centre in Cape Coast.