Perceived or real: Reasons accounting for difficulties in the study of public administration in African universities

Abstract

Studies on reasons accounting for the difficulties in learning public administration is relatively new in the public administration literature though many findings exist regarding students’ difficulties in the study of different subject areas. This paper examines whether the perceived reasons in other subjects are real in the study of public administration in African universities. Using a quantitative method and sample N = 650, data were gathered from university students studying public administration in Ghana and Nigeria. The data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. This study reveals a correlation between concept difficulty and students lacking opportunity for group studies, syllabus wideness, and textbook/slides not being easy to follow as real reasons accounting for concept difficulty in the study of public administration in African universities. This study concludes that the three reasons outlined are not perceived but real reasons accounting for difficulties in the study of public administration in African universities. Appropriate remediating measures are recommended to bolster the study of the subject in African universities.

Keywords:

• public administration
• reasons for difficulties
• African universities

1. Introduction

Public service values, such as respect, equity, diversity, and inclusiveness, are central foci among the professional standards and norms within the public administration field, its academic discipline and related curricula (Evans & Knepper, 2020). In public administration, students are taught the principles of good management with the expectation that they will become effective and efficient public organisational managers (McDonald, 2020). Functionally, this philosophy of training prepares students to work within a system that either maintain the status quo or anticipates only positive growth. For public administration students, this system is reflective of a government or nonprofit operating effectively and efficiently within a stabilised economy (McDonald, 2020).

The observations of McDonald are typically reflective of what pertains in the African context. Students are taught with expectations of manning the public and private sectors after graduating from the university to help government’s drive of enhancing service delivery effectively. This has not proven to always achieve the desired results in developing countries as Azizuddin and Hossain (2020) report that, most universities in Bangladesh offer public administration degrees; however, minimal contributions to nation-building have been observed. This suggests that the learning process of public administration must be looked at. For instance, a well-rounded public service professional needs a well-rounded educational foundation, creating the ability to operate in any economic sector (Henson, 2019). However, a key challenge that academic planners fail to establish is the ease with which students study the subject to be able to replicate knowledge in the real-world environment. This requires research to ascertain whether or not the reasons accounting for the difficulty in learning public administration are real or perceived. Lack of knowledge on whether the reasons students ascribe to the study of public administration is real or perceived precludes educational stakeholders from prescribing solutions to solving the difficulties relative to African universities. This situation entrenches the perceived or actual difficulties of the subject and will make students find the subject continually difficult and unattractive.

Difficulty in studying refers to the condition in which it is not easy to do, understand or cope with what is being learnt. Awaah et al. (2020) suggest that student difficulty in understanding public administration may arise out of not making time to learn, preconceived biases of the subject difficulty and large classroom sizes which is unfavorable for students to pay attention to lecturers. Awaah et al.’s (2020) assertion underscores earlier empirical studies. For instance, Boud et al. (1999) argue that forms of peer, collaborative or cooperative learning, particularly small group activities, are increasingly used within university courses to assist students to meet a variety of learning outcomes. These include working collaboratively with others, taking responsibility for their learning and deepening their understanding of specific course content. They agree that the potential benefits of peer learning have long been recognised and are especially relevant today. Keller and Cernerud (2002) also report that students with previous knowledge of computers were all less positive to e-learning than other students. This finding suggests that a subject’s difficulty has no link to the student knowledge of that subject. While this has been established in the computer science literature, nothing is known about student’s previous background in public administration and how it correlates with difficulties in the study of the subject.

Furthermore, literature on student difficulties in the study of public administration has been established (see, Awaah, 2020: Awaah et al., 2020). However, the correlation between the perceived and real reasons for the difficulties in the study of public administration among African university students is overlooked. Admittedly, reasons for difficulties in the study of other subjects have been reported (See, Chiu & Cheng, 2017; Loes et al., 2018; Munir et al., 2018), but none within the field has drawn empirical evidences from respondents felt experiences to establish reasons for the subject difficulties and whether the reasons for such are real or perceived. This gap in literature requires an empirical investigation to test whether the reasons accounting for difficulties in other areas are applicable to public administration and they are perceived or real.

Therefore, this study investigates whether students’ lack of opportunity for group studies, the syllabus being too wide, and the textbook/slides not being easy to follow are perceived or actual reasons for student difficulties in the study of public administration. These reasons have been selected since no literature has established their contributions to the difficulties in the study of public administration or documented whether they are perceived or actual reasons for difficulties in the study of the subject. Consequently, it is hypothesised that there is no statistically significant difference between the independent variable (Textbook/Slides not easy to follow, students not having opportunity for group studies and syllabus wideness) and concept difficulty in the study of public administration in African universities.

2. Justifications for the questions of the survey

In three previous studies, the researchers had investigated concepts in bids to establish difficulties in the study of public administration from different perspective. For instance, Awaah et al. (2020) sought answers to (a) what topics in public administration students find difficult to learn; (b) if there are statistically significant relationship between gender and concept difficulty in the study of public administration in African universities; (c) if there are statistically significant relationship between student’s career interest and concept difficulty in the study of public administration; and (d) if there are statistically significant relationship between country of study and concept difficulty in the study of public administration.

We subsequently tried to: (1) establish whether there is a statistically significant difference in no opportunity for group studies as a reason accounting for concept difficulty in the study of public administration in African; (2) find whether there is a statistically significant difference in no previous background in public administration as a reason accounting for concept difficulty in the study of public administration in African; (3) establish whether or not there is a statistically significant difference in syllabus wideness as a reason accounting for concept difficulty in the study of Public Administration in African; (Awaah, Arkorful et al., 2021).

In a third study, Awaah et al. (2021) intended to: (i) find out the reasons accounting for subject difficulty in the study of PA by African university students (ii) whether there is a statistically significant difference between lower levels and upper levels students concept difficulties in the study of PA in African universities; (iii) whether there is a statistically significant difference between the study of PA as a bachelor of business administration course and as bachelor of science in PA program in African universities.

The three studies have not answered what this particular study intends to achieve, leading to the questions of this survey. Understanding whether syllabus wideness as a reason for the difficulty in the study of public administration is perceived or real; whether students’ lack of opportunity for group studies in public administration as a reason for the difficulty in the study of public administration is perceived or real, and whether textbook/slides not being easy to follow as a reason for the difficulty in the study of public administration is perceived or real would narrow the gap on research of difficulties in the study of public administration in African universities.

3. Literature review

3.1. Theoretical underpinning

Vygotsky (1962) view cognitive development as a result of a dialectical process, where the child learns through shared problem-solving experience with others like teachers, parents, siblings (Awaah et al., 2020). His assertion of the dialectical process is relevant to this study in the sense that it emphasises problem solving relative to shared problem solving experience. This relates to opportunity for group studies as being tested in this study as a determinant of difficulties in the study of public administration and further determining whether it is a real or perceived reason.

Vygotsky (1962) emphasises the social contexts of learning that knowledge is mutually built and constructed. The social contexts of learning also emphasises the benefits of collaboration in group work and with a more skilled tutor, an individual will facilitate the transition from learners, the zone of proximal development to new levels of skills and competences. This assertion of Vygotsky (1962) places teachers support at the centre of learning and as such relevant to this study since the study seeks to test whether “teacher not being helpful or friendly” is a determinant of the difficulties in the study of public administration and whether it is perceived or real.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is Vygotsky’s (1962) term for the range of tasks that are too difficult for children to master alone but can be learned with guidance and assistance from adults or more skilled children working independently (Awaah et al., 2020). This implies the teacher should act as a facilitator by gradually withdrawing explanations, hints, and demonstrations until the students can perform the skill alone. This will encourage the student to learn from previous knowledge they had before coming to school or knowledge they already have to build the new knowledge. This also affirms the relevance of the theory to this study since the study will test previous knowledge or its lack thereof on the understanding or difficulty in the study of public administration.

Additionally, Vygotsky (1962) posits that in the practical class the teacher is expected to sensitise learners to their environment, develop critical thinking, encourage creative thinking and encourage exploration that will enhance self-directed and cooperative learning amongst the learners. This also relates to the teacher not allowing time for questions being a reason for the difficulty in the study of public administration. Vygotsky’s (1962) theory also encourages social learning and recognises that learning involving group work could improve students’ academic achievement.

3.2. Related literature

Available literature submit that students’ lack of previous background in a course, lecturers’ lack of knowledge to teach the course, no opportunity for group studies, the lecturer not allowing time for questions, syllabus wideness, and the lecturer not being helpful or friendly are the reasons accounting difficulties in the study of subjects including public administration. These reasons have received dominance in literature as factors affecting students’ academic performance. For instance, Dincer and Uysal (2010) report that previous academic record or knowledge is very important in the study of a course. Similarly, Craig et al. (2004), and Stegers‐Jager et al. (2015) further confirm the importance of student’s past performance as a forecaster of impending performance in a subject. They also reported the importance of a student’s background as a forecaster of good performance in a course (Stegers‐Jager et al., 2015).

Angeli et al. (2016) posit that to be able to teach an AK-6 computational thinking curriculum, a teacher needs to know the technological pedagogical content. Emphasising that knowledge in the field of a course helps the instructor impact positively to his students. Likewise, Sadler and Sonnert (2016) discover that teachers who had solid knowledge in the course content and can identify students’ weakness in the course can increase their student knowledge in the course they are teaching more than their counterparts who do not possess that knowledge. Furthermore, Muzenda (2013) on lecturer competence and academic performance of students indicates that subject knowledge, teaching skills, lecturer attendance, and lecturer attitude have a significant positive influence on students’ academic performance. Muzenda (2013) adds that the lecturer gains acceptance based on the student’s interaction.

Previous studies have also revealed the importance or need for group studies or collaborative or cooperative learning in educational institutions. For instance, Slavin (1983) indicate a positive achievement effect on cooperative learning instructional methods, in which students work in small groups to learn academic materials. He adds that group rewards and individual accountability are held to be essential to the instructional effectiveness of cooperative learning methods in academia (Slavin, 1983). In support of this, Altun (2017) ascertain that cooperation-based learning-teaching environment provides cooperation, supported permanent learning, provides opportunities to be successful, contributes to the development of social and personal skills, but also causes worry as it requires students to be successful at all stages.

Exposure to collaborative learning activities positively influenced students’ openness to diversity, regardless of their background characteristics in relation to students’ interactional diversity experiences (Loes et al., 2018). Thus, exposure to collaborative learning led to a greater frequency of students interacting with others who were different from themselves, which in turn led to a greater openness to diversity (ibid). Alike, Munir et al. (2018) posit that cooperative learning improved students’ communication skills and enabled them to build their teamwork and problem-solving skills. They added that more than 90% of students agreed that flipped classroom with cooperative learning enabled them to extend their skills. Raising student’ self-confidence and motivation, reducing students’ nervousness, raising students’ responsibility in learning, and making the students easier to learn are the strengths of Cooperative Learning (Ghufron & Ermawati, 2018).

Like various views, the works of (Chiu & Cheng, 2017; Hao et al., 2020; Hyun et al., 2017; Kim et al., 2019; Owens et al., 2020) establish the relationship between teacher not allowing time for questions and difficulties in a subject. Hyun et al. (2017), for instance, report that active learning pedagogy activities are positively significant factors that increase students’ satisfaction with their individual and group learning processes. To Hao et al. (2020), active learning and teaching were found to influence student achievements in higher education significantly positively. These findings show that active learning, the teacher allowing time for questions or being helpful, is one of the reasons for concept difficulties, motivation and achievements. In some instances, courses that adopt active learning in a learning environment are significantly better designed and encourage student creativity and innovation than courses which use regular classrooms (Chiu & Cheng, 2017).

Although active learning is found to enhance students’ motivation and attitudes, faculty indicate that students resist active learning and censure them on evaluations after incorporating active learning into their instruction, resulting in an apparent paradox which may be a result of variation in the active learning instruction that was implemented (Owens et al., 2020). This implies students’ in-class participation facilitates the positive relationship between attendance and academic achievement (Kim et al., 2019). Students’ participation during teaching and learning will increase their understanding of the subject or course. This also finds support in the work of Tang et al. (2018), that students’ performance of a question generation model in terms of scores could be easily improved by a question answering model via policy gradient. Thus, learning question generation as positive instances could bring a performance boost for students.

Again, Musasia et al. (2012) discover that a wide syllabus contributes to students’ inability to grasp concepts fully. Their study proved that because of the wide structure of the syllabus, students and teachers could not complete the syllabus on time. They, however, ascertain that for the syllabus to be completed on time, both students and teachers had to put in extra tuition time, high standards of discipline, good previous academic knowledge, regular assessment and exposure to external mock papers to boost student performance (Musasia et al., 2012).

Contradictory to the assertion of the scholars above, Nicoll and Francisco (2001) assert that achievement in a course design is significantly related to students’ logical thinking skills rather than to their related previous knowledge in a course. Moreover, Greene and Byler (2004) state that background in a particular course may increase the probability of students’ performance depending on the level of difficulty of the individual course. They add that there is no strong relationship between background and students that do well (Greene & Byler, 2004). Additionally, Allen (2007) theorises that behaviourists study current behaviour and are not concerned with the past, emphasising that the previous learning experience has no bearing on the current understanding of concepts.

3.3. Conceptual framework

Following the theoretical underpinning and the related literature, it is expected the reasons accounting for students’ difficulty in the study of public administration will correlate with difficult concepts in public administration, as illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Conceptual framework

Source: Authors’ model (2022)

4. Methodology

4.1. Research design

The study adopted a quantitative approach and a cross-sectional survey design to collect the data. The quantitative approach allowed the researchers to gather numeric data using a survey method at a single moment in time (Zikmund et al., 2010). Since the study seeks to test the statistical difference between the variables, the quantitative approach and survey design are most appropriate (Zikmund et al., 2010).

4.2. Study setting, participants and sampling

Two West African countries, Ghana and Nigeria, were selected for the study. This was based on two considerations. Both countries are Anglophone and hence comparable in terms of language to investigate the primary goal of the study—topics/concepts that students find difficult to learn. It would have been a weakness of the study if the selected countries did not use the same language in delivering public administration syllabi for African universities. Secondly, of the countries operating the public administration syllabus in West Africa, Ghana and Nigeria inherited the public sector from the same colonial master (Britain), thus showing similarities in their public administration perspectives. This provides some guarantee that the study sample from both countries will reduce the possibility of committing a type 1 error.

The study’s participants were 650 undergraduate public administration students from four public universities and one private university in Nigeria and Ghana from an initial administration of 900 questionnaires. The universities were selected on one criterion; that a university should have taught public administration as an undergraduate course or program for ten years. All five universities met the criterion. The sample size was determined using Patton’s (2002) criteria. The participants were randomly selected so that every student would have an equal chance of being selected. This sampling technique helps to reduce sample selection bias and improves the objectivity of the sampling process (Saunders et al., 2016).

4.3. Instrumentation and data collection

The Difficult Concept in Public Administration Questionnaire (DCIPAQ) used employed as the data collection instrument. The DCIPAQ was adapted from Awaah et al. (2020). It contained five sections. Section A collected demographic data. Section B had ten selected topics drawn from the public administration syllabus by all universities in Nigeria and Ghana. The section had a three-point rating scale of very difficult, moderately difficult, and not difficult. Section C sought to know from the respondents the factors influencing their perception of the difficulty of the topics. This section had a listing of reasons for the difficulties, derived from a pilot study and placed on a four-point rating scale of strongly agree (SA), Agree (A), disagree (D), and strongly disagree (SD). Section E sought students’ suggestions for improvement in studying public administration.

Validation of DCIPAQ was conducted by a team of 15 experts in public administration and education studies. Upon endorsement of validity, the test-retest reliability coefficient of the instrument after two weeks of administration among 50 participants from the University of Professional Studies—Accra showed an acceptable coefficient (r = .87).

5. Procedure

After seeking permission from school authorities to conduct the study (university administration in some cases and lecturers in others), the research team ensured a friendly atmosphere wherein the respondents felt relaxed and ready to participate (this was achieved with the help of the universities public administration lecturers). The information which was not readily available to the respondents (such as teacher’s qualification and years of experience) was provided on a general note.

6. Ethical considerations

The current study was subject to specific ethical considerations. All participants gave their written consent regarding their participation in the research through a signed Consent on the questionnaire. Also, the consent of the universities was sought either through the administration or the subject lecturer before questionnaires were administered. Both processes aimed to reassure participants and university authorities that their participation in the research was voluntary and that they were free to withdraw from it at any point and for any reason. Again, participants were fully informed of the study’s objectives and assured that their responses would be treated as confidential and used only for research purposes. Apart from the above, respondents were not harmed or abused, physically or psychologically, during the research.

7. Data analysis

IBM-SPSS Version 23 software was used to analyse the data. After the initial raw analysis of the three-point scale of not difficult, moderately difficult. In the data coding process, not difficult was scored 1, moderately difficult = 2, and very difficult = 3. For each respondent, it was then possible to get a difficulty score which ranged between 1 and 3. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were carried out. Precisely, we tested the hypotheses using multiple linear regression analysis.

8. Findings

We set out to ascertain whether there is a correlation between concept difficulty and students’ lack of opportunity for group studies in Public Administration, syllabus wideness and the textbook/slides not being easy to follow as reasons accounting for concept difficulty in the study of public administration in African universities.

8.1. Correlation analysis

One of the key assumptions of the linear regression model is that the independent variables should be independent (not highly correlated). Table 1 shows the Pearson Correlation matrix for the four variables of the study.

Table 1. Pearson’s correlation matrix

VARIABLES	1	2	3	4
1. Concept difficulty	1.000	0.208	0.223	0.235
2. I learn better in a group, but there is no opportunity to do	0.208	1.000	0.254	0.251
3. The syllabus is too wide	0.223	0.254	1.000	0.368
4. Textbook/slides not easy to follow	0.235	0.251	0.368	1.000

It can be seen from Table 1 that the pairwise correlations between the four independent variables are less than 0.50, showing that the independent variables are not highly correlated or there is no presence of multicollinearity.

9. Model summary of the regression analysis

Table 2 shows the model summary of the regression analysis.

Table 2. Model summary of the regression analysis

Model	R	R Square	Adjusted R Square	Std. Error of the Estimate
1	.306^a	.093	.089	3.60
a. Predictors: (Constant), Textbook/Slides not easy to follow, I learn better in a group but there is no opportunity to do, the syllabus is too wide
b. Dependent Variable: TOTALDIFFICULTSCORE

Table 2 indicates the R Square, which is the percent of variance explained by the model. The R Square coefficient of determination is 0.093, which means that 0.9% of the variance in the dependent variable (Concept difficulty) is explained by the independent variables (Textbook/Slides not easy to follow, I learn better in a group, but there is no opportunity to do, the syllabus is too wide). This implies that more other factors account for the difficulty in studying public administration in African universities.

10. The overall significance of the regression model used

Table 3 shows the analysis of variance (ANOVA) table for the test of the overall significance of the regression model.

Table 3. ANOVA result

Model		Sum of Squares	Df	Mean Square	F	Sig.
3	Regression	862.111	3	287.370	22.17	.000^b
	Residual	8372.868	646	12.961
	Total	9234.978	649
a. Dependent Variable: TOTALDIFFICULTSCORE
b. Predictors: (Constant), Textbook/Slides not easy to follow, I learn better in a group, but there is no opportunity to do, The syllabus is too wide

Table 3 shows a statistical significance between independent variables (Textbook/Slides not easy to follow, I learn better in a group, but there is no opportunity to do, The syllabus is too wide) and Concept Difficulty based on the ANOVA values; F (3, 646) = 22.17, p = .000. Hence, at the 0.05 level of significance, the multiple linear regression model with three independent variables is significant.

Table 4 shows the coefficients of the relationship between independent variables and Concept Difficulty.

Table 4. Estimation of coefficient

Variables	Coefficients	Standard Error	T Stat	P-value
Intercept	12.25	0.502	24.378	.000
I learn better in a group but there is no opportunity to do	0.586	0.169	3.460	.001
The syllabus is too wide	0.538	0.167	3.231	.001
Textbook/Slides not easy to follow	0.647	0.174	3.710	.000

Let $X_1=$ I learn better in a group but there is no opportunity to do

$X_2=$ The syllabus is too wide

$X_3=$ Textbook/Slides not easy to follow

$Y=$ Concept Difficulty

Therefore, the estimated regression model is

$\hat{Y}=42.192+0.586X_1+0.538X_2+0.647X_3.$

$\hat{\alpha }=12.25:$ Theoretically, in the absence of all the four independent variables, the score on Concept Difficulty is expected to be 12.25.

${\hat{\beta }}_1=0.586:$ When (I learn better in a group but there is no opportunity to do) is increased by 1, the score on Concept Difficulty is expected to be 0.586.

${\hat{\beta }}_2=0.538:$ When (syllabus is too wide) is increased by 1, the score on Concept Difficulty is expected to increase by 0.538.

${\hat{\beta }}_3=0.647:$ When (Textbook/Slides not easy to follow) is increased by 1, the score on Concept Difficulty is expected to increase by 0.647.

The result indicates that all the independent variables (Textbook/Slides not easy to follow, I learn better in a group, but there is no opportunity to do, the syllabus is too wide) positively impact Concept Difficulty.

The p-values for I learn better in a group but there is no opportunity to do (0.001), syllabus is too wide (0.001) and Textbook/Slides not easy to follow (0.000) are less than 0.05, which means that they have a significant effect on Concept Difficulty.

The results indicate that Textbook/Slides not easy to follow, students not having the opportunity for group studies, and syllabus wideness increases student difficulty in studying public administration in African universities.

11. Hypotheses testing

We hypothesised that: there is no statistically significant between the independent variable (Textbook/Slides not easy to follow, students not having opportunity for group studies and syllabus wideness) and concept difficulty in the study of public administration in African universities. However, the statistical significance between independent variables (Textbook/Slides not easy to follow, I learn better in a group, but there is no opportunity to do, The syllabus is too wide) and Concept Difficulty based on the ANOVA values; F (3, 646) = 22.17, p = .000 indicates a statistical significance.

Therefore, we reject the various hypotheses that there are no statistically significant between the independent variable (Textbook/Slides not easy to follow, students not having opportunity for group studies and syllabus wideness) and concept difficulty in the study of public administration in African universities. These findings imply that students’ lack of opportunity for group studies in public administration, syllabus wideness, and textbook/slides not being easy to follow are real reasons accounting for concept difficulty in studying public administration in African universities. However, there are many other reasons that future researchers should investigate.

12. Discussion

The study sought to establish whether students’ lack of opportunity for group studies in public administration, syllabus wideness, and the textbook/slides not being easy to follow are perceived or real reasons for the difficulties in studying the subject.

It is found that students’ lack of opportunity for group studies in public administration, syllabus wideness, and textbook/slides not being easy to follow are real reasons accounting for concept difficulty in studying public administration in African universities. This finding is not new in educational literature. It is consistent with previous studies that revealed the importance or need for group studies or collaborative or cooperative learning in educational institutions. For instance, Slavin (1983) reported a positive achievement effect on cooperative learning instructional methods, in which students work in small groups to learn academic materials. Altun (2017) also found that a cooperation-based learning-teaching environment provides cooperation, supports permanent learning, provides opportunities to be successful, and contributes to developing social and personal skills. Exposure to collaborative learning activities positively influenced students’ openness to diversity, regardless of their background characteristics related to students’ interactional diversity experiences (Loes et al., 2018). Cooperative learning improves students’ communication skills and enables them to build their teamwork and problem-solving skills (Munir et al., 2018). The strengths of Cooperative Learning are raising students’ self-confidence and motivation, reducing students’ nervousness, raising students’ responsibility in learning, and making learning easier (Ghufron & Ermawati, 2018).

This finding may stem from the reasoning that students in African universities regard collaborative or group learning as important. Hence their lack of opportunities for such activity will increase the difficulties in studying public administration. Normally, students excel when they work in groups from the experiences of the researchers teaching public administration over the years. This may largely be a result of students’ complimenting each other’s study weaknesses with their comparative strengths and the colleague relations enhancing the freedom to express thoughts and opinions. Hyun et al. (2017) reported that active learning pedagogy activities are significant positive factors that increase students’ satisfaction with their individual and group learning processes. To Hao et al. (2020), active learning and teaching positively influence student achievements in higher education.

In some instances, courses that adopt active learning in a learning environment are significantly better designed and encourage student creativity and innovation than courses which use regular classrooms (Chiu & Cheng, 2017). Although active learning is found to enhance students’ motivation and attitudes, faculty indicate that students resist active learning and censure them on evaluations after incorporating active learning into their instruction, resulting in an apparent paradox which may be a result of variation in the active learning instruction that was implemented (Owens et al., 2020). Students’ in-class participation facilitates the positive relationship between attendance and academic achievement (Kim et al., 2019). Hence students’ participation during teaching and learning will increase their understanding of the subject or course. This also finds support in the work of Tang et al. (2018), that a question-answering model could easily improve students’ performances of a question generation model in terms of scores via policy gradient. Thus, learning question generation as a positive instance could boost students’ performance.

Lastly, a wide syllabus was found to be a factor accounting for subject difficulty. This is consistent with the works of Musasia et al. (2012) that a wide syllabus contributes to students’ inability to grasp the concepts fully. Their study proved that because of the wide structure of the syllabus, students and teachers could not complete the syllabus on time. Usually, students have more than public administration to study within a semester. This can be compounded if the syllabus for public administration is wide, leading to students not making enough time to study the subject, rendering it difficult.

13. Conclusion

We investigated whether the reasons accounting for the study of public administration are real or perceived. The indicators used were students’ lack of opportunity for group studies in public administration, syllabus wideness and the textbook/slides not being easy to follow as reasons accounting for concept difficulty in studying public administration in African Universities. The study used a sample of 650 university students from Ghana and Nigeria. Regression analysis of the data from the difficult concepts in the public administration questionnaire showed a correlation between concept difficulty and students’ lack of opportunity for group studies in public administration, syllabus wideness, and the textbook/slides not being easy to follow as reasons accounting for concept difficulty in the study of public administration. This means that the identified reasons for the difficulties in studying public administration are real and not perceived. Based on these findings, the following practical suggestions are noted.

14. Practical suggestions

First, as a way of curbing the difficulties in the study of public administration in higher education and reinforcing students’ understanding of concepts in the subject, collaborative learning should be encouraged among students. The lecturers or instructors can do this by forming groups and assigning them tasks from the beginning of the semester. This will enhance students’ understanding of difficult concepts in the study of the subject. To further encourage collaborative learning, instructors should also shift from individualised assessments of students to group assessments.

Secondly, African institutions of higher education should reassess the curriculum to reduce aspects of the syllabus that are unnecessary for the course to lessen the burden of syllabus wideness that mitigate student understanding of the course. This can be done by emphasising concepts that directly impact the strategic vision of the specific African country rather than broad perspectives that do not feed into the country’s development agenda. To further achieve this, educational assessment should be hinged largely on topics that feed directly into the strategic development agenda of the given country.

Finally, textbooks should be written by Africans with African examples adopting the Culturo-Techno-Conceptual-approach to curb the challenge of textbooks/slides not being easy to follow in the study of public administration. This can be achieve by assessing students based on local contexts derived from home derived text books rather than foreign study materials.

15. Originality/value

Investigating how reasons correlate to difficulties in many subject areas seems overly researched, especially in the sciences. This study shows a clear departure by investigating the phenomenon from public administration perspective at the university level and departing from the traditional sciences and assessing whether the reasons for the difficulties in the course are perceived or real, making this study original.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no direct funding for this research.

Notes on contributors

Fred Awaah

Fred Awaah currently lectures Public Administration, at the University of Professional Studies – Accra, Ghana. Fred has also taught in Nigeria, Botswana and Lesotho. His academic footprints within the Africa Higher Education Space has witnessed presentations for the African Union, European Union, Association of African Universities, UNESCO, DAAD, Trust Africa, MasterCard Foundation, UNESCO’s Institute of African Culture and International Understanding, the Centre for Human Security and many African governments. He served as a member of the European Union’s Tuning Africa Policy Advisory Group from 2013-2016 where he represented the All- Africa Students Union; being its Secretary-General from 2012 to 2016.

Peter Okebukola

Peter Okebukola is a distinguished Professor of Higher Education Management with extensive consultancies for many international organisations including the African Union, European Union, Association of African Universities, and the World Bank amongst others. He is the founding Director of the Africa Centre of Excellence into Transformative STEM Education at the Lagos State Universities. His previous positions include vice-chancellor of the Lagos State University and Executive Secretary of the national universities commission of Nigeria.

Juma Shabani

Juma Shabani is currently the Director of the Doctoral School of the University of Burundi. Before his appointment, he worked with UNESCO in its Bamako and Harare clusters offices. He also worked with the UNESCO headquarter in France.

Helen Arkorful

Helen Arkorful is Dean of the weekend school at the University of Professional Studies - Accra. She previously held the position of the head of the department of the business administration department.