Impact of teachers' and students' perception of class retention on academic achievement in secondary schools in Meru county, Kenya
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Date
2014-07-24
Authors
Nangithia, Robert Mburung'a
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Abstract
Class retention is a practice that despite many years of research remains one of the most controversial and highly debated topics in the field of education. Teachers, parents, students and education administrators have varied perceptions regarding class retention. Although a number of studies have been carried out in this area, researchers have not given much attention to the perception of students and teachers with regard to class retention and its effects on the academic achievement of learners. In Kenya, there have been mixed concerns over retention in both private and public schools. Due to teacher and school accountability, retention has become an increasingly worrying problem in Kenyan schools. While the emphasis of performance remains a desire and an effort in many secondary schools, key issues like how students and teachers view retention and how their perceptions affect retention decisions need to be keenly studied. Therefore, the purpose of this study will be to investigate both negative and positive perceptions of students and teachers with regard to how these perceptions impact on self-esteem and
consequently on academic achievement. The study will also endeavor to find out the effects of
academic failure on students' self esteem and the relationship between self esteem and academic
achievement. The findings of this study will aid students, parents and teachers during decisionmaking
process pertaining to class retention, and to effectively deal with related issues of student's self-esteem and academic achievement. Rodger's Person centered theory and Erickson's psychosocial theory will form the logical theoretical basis to explain the study. The study's design will be descriptive survey design. The target population will comprise of the secondary school teachers and students drawn from Meru County. Cluster, random and purposive sampling will be employed to select the respondents. The sample will include students who have repeated in form three, the poor performers and their classmates in the same class. Questionnaires will be used as the main tool for data collection. Students' Questionnaire will entail questions for repeaters, those at risk of repeating due to poor performance, and for the normal students. Form three class teachers will also be included in the sample to give the general teacher perception regarding retention. Rosenberg self-esteem scale will be used to determine self- esteem levels of students. Qualitative data will be analyzed by use of descriptive statistics like the mean, mode, median and the standard deviation. Quantitative data will be analyzed using inferential statistics such as the Pearson product moment correlation, T- test and Chi- square to describe the data sets.
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