Performing Arts pedagogy courses have not been the choice of pre-service generalist teachers in Wesley College of Education in the city of Kumasi, Ghana between 2010/2011 and 2016/2017 academic years. At the beginning of the 2017/2018 academic year, six students selected the course as their elective for study. This study explores the motivation behind these pre-service teachers selecting the Performing Arts pedagogy courses for study. Prior engagement in the performing arts, expectation of ability to teach, and achieving good examination results emerged as the main themes from the analysis of qualitative semi-structured interview data. Findings suggest that there is a relationship between prior experiences in the performing arts and motivation to continue engagements in the arts. Further research with pre-service teachers to identify their needs, interests, abilities and background experiences in the performing arts will help teacher educators to train students to be effective practitioners in their future classrooms.
Keywords: Colleges Of Education, Ghana, Motivation, Pedagogy, Performing Arts, Pre-service Generalist Teachers
