CW-School of Education

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    Contribution of Ineffective Teaching and Learning of Mathematics to Regional Disparities in Socio Economic Development in Africa
    (Kenyatta University, 2003) Rukangu, S. M.
    Causes of diversified curriculum changes in US.A, Europe and Russia have basically been technological compared to other regions. Yet, mathematics has consistently remained a central and important subject in all school curriculum levels. Its immense relationship with other subject areas has created not only pressure on students 'performance in various examinations but also acts as "frustrating belts" for their future careers. Various policy changes, threatening demands for specific entries into the different career training institutions emphasize on mathematical grades . . Direct employment requirements and teaching styles for teachers have often used mathematics for selection purposes. Yet, real mathematical knowledge for socioeconomic development is least solicited from individuals. Priorities for alleviating poor results in mathematics have been identified in various African countries such as Kenya, Zimbabwe and Namibia. Nevertheless, the improvement, if any, is minimal while socio-economic development continues to drop. Poor socioeconomic development can be linked to poor learning in mathematics. Currently the subject s learning procedures produce few individuals with good grades in mathematics and majority with poor grades. It is important to note that good grades per se are not sufficient to enhance socioeconomic development in Africa. There are other mathematical issues that are closely related to such development, which the teaching and learning of mathematics must address. This paper addresses such issues including problem solving and equity for mathematical education. Others are issues relating to poverty, politics and forming a wider learning environment for mathematics education in schools. Unless such issues, and the equity in mathematics in particular are fully addressed, the students' endless poor performance will continue to form a strong base for poor socioeconomic performance in Africa. This is the essence of this paper at this forum
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    Disparities in Access to Literacy Predictors among Primary School Children in Kenya
    (Kenyatta University, 2003) Bunyi, G.; Mumo, Kamau D.
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    The African Universities' Response to the Undergraduate Students' Need for Independent Learning and Critical Thinking Skills
    (Kenyatta University, 2003) Ndethiu, Sophia M.
    In this paper, the author challenges leaders, teachers and other stakeholders in institutions of higher learning in Africa to give the promotion of independent learning and critical thinking skills the seriousness that it deserves. Many students that join university do so with only "lower-order" learning abilities so that higher institutions of learning need to respond by stepping in specific measures to bridge this gap. Universities have to be prepared to equip students with "high-order" learning abilities that will guarantee independence, engender intellectual stimulation and encourage independent scholarship while at the same time preparing them for life-long learning and critical thinking that are the defining attributes of life in an information based society. It challenges those universities that already have academic interventions for first-year students to interrogate the role being played by these structures with a goal to strengthening their core aims and missions. The role that universities can play to meet this very noble end is extrapolated against the current trends and realities within the teaching/learning environments of African universities. The paper proposes that African universities should adopt the "constructivist learning paradigm" which could guide our pedagogical choices if we are to develop learners with greater capacities for learning now and in the future. It ends by offering some recommendations
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    Gender and poverty eradication in Kenya since 1983
    (2003-09) Wambua, Lois M.
    The paper attempts to assess the roles that have been played by both men and women in poverty eradication in Kenya for the last two decades. Specifically, the paper tries to show what men and women at different level of social strata in Kenya have done and are still doing to eradicate poverty in the country. It examines some of the gender issues that may have impacted either positively or negatively on the participation of both men and women in poverty eradication programs. It also examines gender- based strategies that have been used to eradicate poverty during the period. The following are some of the factors discussed: Level of education attained, Facilitation and encouragement by the government, NGOs, and the wider society, Rural-urban migration and slum growth trends in the main cities and towns, Employment/ unemployment in the public sector, Effects of structural programs (SAPS) of the eighties and nineties and Leadership roles played by both men and women at different socio-economic. Finally recommendations on the strategies that may be used to eradicate poverty in Kenya more effectively are given and the way forward suggested.
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    Citizenship education and political engagement: voices of Kenyan youth from Nyeri and Nairobi
    (2005-09) Chege, Fatuma N.; Wawire, V. K.; Arnot, Madeleine; Wainaina, Paul K.
    Education plays a major role in equipping individuals with skills that enable them to participate fully as citizens in society. This paper interrogates this in the context of the nature of political engagement for schooled young persons living in impoverished rural and urban settings in Kenya. Using qualitative methods that include focused group discussions and interviews, young people are given a chance to express their views on how education has enabled them to enact their citizenship. They discuss their political identifications, their rights as citizens, and the failure to achieve these, the effects of schooling on their feelings of belonging and inclusion and the perceived potential of second chance education in helping them move forward. The findings indicate that while the Kenyan education system is designed to shape young people’s civic consciousness, varying schooling experiences based on socio-cultural and geographical divides determine the level to which they are able to enjoy their citizenship rights and see possibilities of achieving full citizenship. Young people voice concerns to government which centre on unemployment, security and the importance of listening to young people, which if addressed would improve the civic education outcomes of young people living in impoverished communities. The expressed faith in a perceived necessary link between education and the attainment of full citizenship creates a running theme in the discourse shaping discussions with the youth.
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    Researching Gender: Explorations into Sexuality and HIV/AIDS in African Contexts
    (Research Consortium on Educational Outcomes and Poverty, 2007) Chege, Fatuma N.
    The author demonstrates that collaborating with children using a gender-sensitive life-cycle approach yields social and health dividends. The paper focuses upon young people and children engaged in HIV/AIDS education, not only as consumers of information but also as generators of knowledge pertinent to their needs, aspirations, anxieties, fears, hopes and dreams. This subject centred approach to education is facilitated by innovative methodologies that allow young people to talk frankly with adults and amongst themselves, to participate in community theatre designed to help different types of people address issues of common interest, and to work with experienced adult researchers in generating relevant data.
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    Youth citizenship, national unity and poverty allev iation: East and West African approaches to the education of a new generation
    (Research Consortium on Educational Outcomes and Poverty, 2009) Chege, Fatuma N.; Casely-Hayford, L.; Arnot, Madeleine; Dovie, D. A.
    Youth citizenship is now on the international agenda. This paper explores what that concept might mean in the context of two African nations: Kenya and Ghana. Post independence, both countries focused on rethinking the colonial concept of citizenship in line with their political-cultural traditions, providing education for all youth and to encouraging new notions of national citizenship. Programmes for civic education were established that have been reshaped over the last fifty years. These citizenship education programmes display the tension between different political goals of national unity, economic progress and the promotion of human rights, working with diversity, and encouraging collective responsibility and individual development. The aim is to use the education of the citizen to encourage civic engagement although there is evidence that these programmes might not, for a variety of reasons, engage all young people into the nation building project. The paper considers evidence from a wide range of documentary and social scientific sources to open debate about how to encourage young people’s citizenship within the project of poverty alleviation.
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    Being young, Kenyan and gendered: the outcomes of schooling and transitions to adulthood in poor urban and rural settings
    (2009-09) Chege, Fatuma N.; Arnot, M.; Wainaina, Paul K.
    This paper which is derived from findings of the Education, Youth, Gender and Citizenship (YGC) project1 foregrounds the experiences and outcomes of schooling as constructed through the voices of young female and male Kenyan youth aged between 18 and 25 years who lived in conditions of relative material poverty in one of the urban communities of the study2. Using qualitative data mainly from interviews, the paper demonstrates how young men and women from impoverished families and communities constructed the outcomes of their schooling, demonstrating the realities of how they negotiated their daily lives and experiences that were build upon some broken promise from a formal education that had failed to deliver them –and their families- out of the cycle of poverty. The expressed need to transform their lives by break out of the cycle of poverty while at the same retaining a sense of belonging to their families and local communities - ‘home and family’ – formed the dominant discourse in the voices of the young women and men –most of who seemed eager to project and be heard. The study findings capture articulations of the value attached to formal education as a communal and individual investment even when the experience of schooling was itself portrayed as a failure in delivering the economic expectations of this young generation of hopeful Kenyan women and men. The explicit difference between young people’s educational aspirations and expectations of schooling vis-àvis the realities of its outcomes as experienced in their daily lives provided the young people a point of departure in interrogating other non-economic benefits of schooling – which in one way or another enhanced their well-being and made them different from the non-schooled peers. Findings demonstrated that the level of schooling –primary and secondary- influenced the articulation of non-economic (social and human development) outcomes of schooling. Gender also seemed to influenced the manner in which the social and human development outcomes of schooling were played out among the youth with the young men presenting themselves as community focused in terms of seeking ways to transforming their environments while the young women were keen in changing their own lives and of their offspring. Thus, the route for escaping poverty was constructed differently between the women and the men while articulation of the means of escape was considerably more concretised among the youth with secondary education. It is in this context that this paper interrogates the implications of different levels of schooling among young Kenyan women and men who live in poor urban settlements.
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    Engendering Empowerment: Education and Equality (E4) Conference Dakar, Senegal (17-20 May 2010)
    (Jenny Parkes (Institute of Education, University of London, UK), 2010) Chege, Fatuma
    In the fifteen years since Beijing, there has been enormous progress in awareness of multiple forms of violence against girls, with research, policy and practice increasingly focusing on and attempting to address violence in and out of school settings. This paper traces these important areas of progress as well as the gaps and challenges. The key question in our analysis is why it is that despite growing awareness and action at international, national and local level, we still have insufficient knowledge about how to combat violence, with girls lacking adequate support and capacity to protect themselves. To address this question, we discuss four broad areas. Following a discussion of theoretical issues and concepts, we examine research evidence on violence against girls. We then consider how violence has been addressed in policy and practice in recent years. Finally, we make some tentative suggestions for the way forward.
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    Why Kenyan academics do not publish in international refereed journals
    (2010) Mweru, Maureen
    An examination of most of the highly ranked journals reveals that few, if any, articles are published byacademics from sub-Saharan African universities. This is the case even when the article’s main topicdirectly relates to issues relevant to sub-Saharan Africa. The study outlined here aimed at explaining whyAfrican, and specifically Kenyan, academics do not publish in international refereed journals, and at takinginto account academics’ own viewpoints on how to increase their number of publications in such journals.
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    Context-based primary teacher training model: the way forward for Kenya
    (2011) Mwangi, Suleiman Kairu; Twoli, N. W.; Maundu, J. N.
    Teacher quality is a continuing interest to most teacher education reform discourses in many countries. Armour and Booth (1999), Feiman-Nemser (2001) and Hoban (2005) argue that most teacher education graduates in many countries often feel inadequate in their preparation for classroom teaching. In Kenya, the Sessional paper No. 1 of 2005, the Kenya Education Sector Support Programme document of 2005-2010 and Wanzare (2002) cite low quality primary teacher education as a major impediment to education reforms. This is attributed to the traditional content-based pedagogical primary teacher education model that lacks adequate learner involvement, presents a fragmented view of learning and has little connection between theory and practice. This study sought to establish whether context-based learning through focus group discussions on teaching and classroom practice improves teachers’ teaching effectiveness and aimed at developing a suitable pre-service primary teacher education model for Kenya. A Quasi-Experimental research design in form of a pre-test/post-test longitudinal panel control group was used. It involved a stratified random sample of 80 first year pre-service teachers from Meru and Egoji colleges (40 for experimental and 40 for control groups). The experimental group was sub-divided into groups of ten of equal gender proportions that held discussions under the facilitation of the researcher once per week during teaching practice sessions. A classroom observation schedule, a focus group discussion schedule and a reflective diary were used to collect data. The findings obtained through the use of a t-test for independent means revealed that there were significant differences between the two groups on instructional systems planning, teacher-student interactions, students’ motivation and use of instructional resources except on teachers’ classroom management.
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    Towards effective management in education: the case of school quality assuarance and standards officer (QASO) in Kenya
    (2011) Kimemia, J. N.
    The management of Education like the other sectors of national development is crucial particularly in this era of inadequate resources and competing dynamics in politics, social and economic arena. There are specifically designed levels and institutions charged with the responsibilities and duties of managing education. Among these institutions is the Inspectorate and the officers (QASO) working in it as professionals and educational managers. At national level, the school QASO are viewed as watchdogs, semi-administrators and professionals to advise and manage schools comprising the teachers, parents, students and the wider community (nation) served by these institutions. This paper attempts to define effective management in education and focuses on the role of school QASO in the management scene. The conceptualization of the pre-requisites in terms of skills and competencies expected from the QASO are highlighted. Consequently, the prevailing mismatches between their advisory and assessment roles are explained. As one scholar rightly questions: Are school QASO Friends or Foes? (Godia: 1984). This question is not resolved because school QASO are involved in managing education within multi-faceted professional conflicts identified in the paper. The recommendation from this study is that these professional conflicts should not be ignored but should be effectively managed.
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    Teacher preparation for the 21st century
    (2011) Mbugua, W.
    Teacher quality affects the quality of the education curriculum, its implementation, assessment and evaluation, making preparation of teachers a very important aspect of any education system in the world. However, most social systems do not treat teacher education as a serious endeavor and so do not improve conditions to make success a possibility. For example, the teacher education curriculum has remained more or less the same over the years. Again, besides the initial training, most teachers have minimal opportunities for any further professional development. As countries continue to experience education reforms in tune with the demands for the 21stcentury competitive workforce, social cohesion and individual growth, it is imperative to have a teacher education program well planned to fit in the rapidly changing world. Thus this paper, proposes a teacher education program suitable to meet the exigencies of the 21st century. The paper argues that teacher education preparation needs to have strong knowledge based pedagogy incorporating clinical schools and information communication technology (ICT). Through it, teachers’ practice will be informed and guided by reflective practice, research and professional development to ensure lifelong learning. Ultimately, the 21stcentury teacher is one who is going to be able to unlearn, learn and relearn in order to influence positive student outcome. As a result, active learning that is constructivist in nature will be encouraged in the classrooms, moving away from the commonly used transmission mode of education.
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    Teacher competencies in accessing online content: a study of Igembe south district
    (2011) Mukami, E.; Mwirigi, L.; muriithi, N.
    ICTs have impacted the way people think and live. With the world moving rapidly into digital media and information, the role of ICT in education is becoming more and more important. Providers of education are reviewing their programs so as to match the changing trends in the world. They have integrated ICT in education. The use of ICT in classroom set ups has impacted on the content and how the learners learn. The integration of ICT in classroom teaching in Kenya has faced many challenges. In this paper we look at the teacher competencies in accessing online content. The objective of this study was to explore teachers’ knowledge and ability to access online content. This study was conducted in Igembe South District of Meru County. The respondents to this study were 100 secondary school teachers. This study was quantitative and adopted a descriptive survey design to gather data. Data collection was carried out using questionnaires. The findings of this study indicate that many teachers do not have access to computers in their schools, they do not access the internet daily and for those who access the internet, they do not plan their searches and are not able to download the content for future use. The main recommendation of this study is, further studies to be conducted on this aspect of ICT in order to come up with a uniform framework for evaluating teachers’ competencies in accessing online content.
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    Quality Education for Societal Transformation
    (Kenyatta University and Syracuse University, 2011) Adelheid, Bwire; Masingila, Joanna
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    Information Literacy in the 21st Century Universities: The Kenyan Experience
    (2011) Amunga, Hellen A.
    Universities are expected to play a vital role in development issues of their countries and beyond as they engage in teaching, learning and research. The world-wide recognition of information as a key resource to the development of economies in the 21st century places even more responsibility on universities as they are looked upon as major consumers and creators of information touching on all sectors of the economy. Their contribution to develpoment therefore largely depends on how applicable the information they generate through research is relevant to the needs of their immediate communities; as well as on the quality of their graduates, and their contribution towards global information reserves. The introduction of Free Primary Education (FPE) by the government of Kenya and its financial support to public secondary school students, coupled with the high demand for university education and high population growth are factors that have led to high ennrolments in the country’s universities. On the other hand, the lack of a national policy on school libraries, the general lack of information literacy programmes in universities, high reliance on the lecture method and the reading-for-exams-only culture are inter-related issues that need to be tackled if the country is to benefit from quality teaching, learning and research. Based on brief literature reviews and the personal experiences through involvement of the author as a teacher-librarian and lecturer and Secretary, Kenya Library Association, this paper gives a general picture of information literacy-related activities in Kenyan universities; and efforts by some stakeholders towards encouragement, adoption and implementation of information literacy efforts in universities in Kenya. Suggestions on the way forward are given.
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    Purpose and structure of tests in secondary school chemistry: the teachers’ response.
    (2011) Ituma, Monica Gakii; Twoli, N. W.
    Much time and resources are invested in frequent testing of students at secondary school level. This is done with an understanding that testing brings improved learning and therefore better performance. This perceived link between testing and performance seems to be the driving force in the testing process. This is much so in the subjects which have traditionally been perceived as difficult and these include mathematics and sciences. This paper discusses some aspects of testing in secondary schools and particularly focuses on one of the science subject which is chemistry. The impetus to focus on chemistry is drawn from consistence posting of poor results at the end of the course in the national examinations. It was envisaged that some views from the teachers would reveal possible weaknesses and strengths that could be shared with other partners with the aim of bringing higher gains in the performance of chemistry and possibly other science subjects. The data discussed in this paper was generated from a survey study which was conducted among a cluster of teachers of secondary schools near Nairobi in Kenya. A total of thirty four (34) teachers from fifteen (15) schools were involved in the study which used mainly questionnaires, interviews and document analysis to collect data. The results indicate that teachers of chemistry take testing as an important process that can bring improvement in learning. Teachers also recognize that only quality tests and proper administration can bring desired effects. Frequency in testing stood out as a feature which emphasized the notion that ‘frequency in testing is proportional to improvement in learning’. Theory test papers were dominant and tested a range of content in the science domains. Chemistry teachers also recognized that skills are important and these were accommodated by practical tests especially in higher classes. Results from tests can be very important to a chemistry teacher or any other teacher in providing ‘feedback for improved instruction’. Results can also be used to compare with other subjects in the school, local schools in the same subjects and can also be used for prediction in the National Examinations. Despite government’s emphasis on improved performance in science, it has no firm guiding policy on test management in schools.