Determinants of Pre-Primary Children’s Reading Readiness in Mathira, Nyeri County, Kenya

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess the determinants of pre-primary school children’s reading readiness, in Mathira sub-county, Nyeri county Kenya. The study was guided by the following objectives: to determine the levels of reading readiness of pre-primary children, to assess the availability of teaching and learning materials, to find out the relationship between availability of teaching/learning materials and children’s reading readiness, to establish the relationship between teachers use of teaching/learning materials and reading readiness and to establish the relationship between teachers’ level of experience and children’s reading readiness. The study adopted the Social Interactionist Theory of Language development by Bruner 1972. The research employed a correlational design which involved collection of quantitative data to determine the degree of relationship between the variables. The target population comprised of 120 pre-primary teachers from public pre-schools were sampled in Mathira East Sub-county. The study adopted simple random sampling technique to select the participants. This meant that all the pre-primary school teachers had equal chance of being selected. The SPSS software was used in analyzing data. The data analysis techniques adopted included the Chi-square descriptives which measures the levels of correlation between variables. The relationship between availability of teaching/learning materials and children’s reading readiness was significant at .05 level of significance (p value =.001). The hypothesis was accepted. This suggests that children’s reading readiness increased with the availability of teaching/learning materials. The relationship between teachers’ use of teaching/learning materials and children’s reading readiness was significant at .05 level of significance (p value =.001). The hypothesis was accepted. This suggests that children’s reading readiness increased with the teachers’ use of teaching/learning materials. The relationship between teachers’ level of teaching Experience and children’s reading readiness was significant at .05 level of significance (p value = .006). The hypothesis was accepted. This suggests that children’s reading readiness increased with the teachers’ level of experience. The study concludes that there was low availability of teaching materials. The study also concludes that children’s reading readiness increased with the teachers’ use of teaching/learning materials. Finally the study concludes that children’s reading readiness increased with the teachers’ level of experience.