This article, which reports on a doctoral research project, explores the perceptions of academic staff on factors of capacity building with special reference to Ghanaian polytechnics, where the institutions are facing unprecedented capacity building challenges. A convenience sample of 1026 academic staff members were drawn from a population of 2575 permanent lecturers in the ten polytechnics. Data were collected through a questionnaire constructed by the researchers. Data collected were subjected to statistical analysis with the use of descriptive statistics, ANOVA and Population t-test. The study found that the factors that affect capacity building of academic staff include institutional training and development; performance and professional development; academic competence; and learning and developmental environment. The study further identified some capacity building gaps in the polytechnics. However, there is no significant difference between male and female lecturers’ perception on capacity building in the polytechnics. Lecturers’ perception on capacity building is also significantly high with respect to the identified factors and that significant differences exist between the demographic (designation) groups and the identified factors. The study concludes that building the capacity of academic staff is critical to successful teaching and learning and that capacity building should be the starting point for the on-going transformation in Ghanaian polytechnics. It therefore recommends that policy makers in Ghana be urgently spurred into devising important strategies that would proactively respond to the current capacity-building challenges in the institutions. Moving forward, a context-responsive areas of strategic intervention vis à vis capacity building of academic staff are proposed.
Keywords: Capacity building, Ghanaian polytechnics, Perceptions, academic competence, staff development; institutional training
