BC-Department of Educational Psychology

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    Wither African Indigenous Knowledge? The Case Of Primary Education In Africa From Colonialism To Globalisation
    (2008) Sifuna, Daniel N.
    The paper shows that the success of any education system depends not only on the nature of its aims, but also on its content. Indigenous African education grew out of the immediate environment, real or imaginary. From the physical environment, children had to learn about weather, landscape, animal and insect life. Children had to have knowledge of important aspects of the environment in order to adopt and exploit it. Most of the early Western scholars at the time of colonization, however, assumed that because Africans knew no reading and writing, they had no systems, contents and methods of education to pass on to the young. To such scholars, education in Africa meant Western civilization. The failure to integrate indigenous learning and Western education was partly a deliberate effort to eradicate African education. The introduction of Western institutions by some colonial agencies, especially the Christian missionaries was also calculated to undermine many aspects of African social structures and pave the way for their replacement. The Western assault on traditional knowledge also applied to the replacement of local languages with foreign languages. With achievement of independence for most African countries in the 1960s, little effort was devoted to considering whether the knowledge conveyed in the schools was of relevance for the young nations. The more urgent problems had to do with the expansion of education, with the building of new schools, with government take-over of private schools as well as doing away with racially-segregated schools. Consequently, curriculum reform to reflect the relevance of the African setting did not take place. Western curricula values continued to be reinforced after independence. The current forces of globalisation, which have strong elements of cultural imperialism and aim at the harmonization of attitudes, supposedly, with the emergence of a global culture and the domination in the use of foreign languages in primary schools in Africa provide little or no room for acquisition of African indigenous knowledge. To arrest the current situation, the paper proposes that it is best for Africa to look to herself for the development of her own curricula and modes of delivery through the examination of methods and techniques of indigenous African knowledge.
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    Parenting: Conflict between traditional and modern parenting practices in Nairobi, Kenya
    (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2012-03-20) Wang'eri, T. W.
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    The Contextualisation of 21st Century Skills: Assessment in East Africa
    (Springer Link, 2024) Care, Esther; Giacomazzi, Mauro; Mugo, John Kabutha
    Education systems worldwide are adapting to demands from civil society and the workforce to better equip young people to function effectively in the twentyfrst century world. The lag from awareness to aspiration to policy and to practice requires communities to contribute to building knowledge, developing tools, and representing society’s needs to government. Three countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, are benefting from the efforts of a network of civil organisations working together with academia and government, which seek to enhance education provision. This introductory chapter establishes the context in which the Assessment of Life Skills and Values in East Africa initiative has developed tools to measure adolescents’ profciencies, and in so doing developed expertise in the assessment of life skills and values through a regional initiative.
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    Academic Engagement as A Predictor of School Completion Intention of Pupils in Upper Classes in Primary Schools in Tharaka Nithi County, Kenya
    (Kenyatta University, 2024-05) Muthengi, Deborah M.
    Despite increased enrollment following FPE, primary school education has continued to face the challenge of many pupils not completing school in Kenya. In Tharaka Nithi, particularly, Tharaka North Sub County, the issue of pupils not completing school is worrisome as reflected by educational statistics from area. Failure to complete school poses a considerable challenge not only to the individual pupil but also to the Kenyan society at large. Academic engagement is becoming an increasingly debated concept for conceptualizing learners’ educational success. Relevant studies that have concentrated on pupils’ characteristics such as academic engagement and its connection to pupils’ decision to quit school are particularly scarce. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the link between academic engagement and intention to complete school among primary school pupils in Tharaka Nithi County. Guided by social cognitive theory and using correlational design this study targeted all the 12,250 pupils in the 63 primary schools in Tharaka North Sub-County. A stratified sample of 295 pupils in class six, seven and eight filled the questionnaires. Research instruments were piloted using a sample of 60 pupils from one school that was exempted during the actual data collection period. Data were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential techniques. The results revealed a significant positive moderate correlations between cognitive academic engagement (r (285) = 0.50, p < 0.01), behavioural academic engagement (r (285) = 0.40, p >0.01), emotional academic engagement (r (285) = .39, p < .01) and school completion intention of pupils in upper classes. Regression analysis revealed that cognitive, behavioral and emotional dimensions of academic engagement significantly predicted school completion intention (F (3, 281) = 38.60, P = .00), and they jointly accounted for 29% of variability in school completion intention. Cognitive academic engagement had the greatest weight followed by behavioural academic engagement and with emotional academic engagement having a non-significant contribution to school completion intention. It was concluded that pupils’ academic engagement is significant in explaining and predicting primary school pupils’ intention to leave school. Therefore, schools and stakeholders in general should come up with interventions targeted at improving pupils’ academic engagement so as to raise their intention to complete school.
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