Quality education under threat in teacher training colleges: a case study of Nairobi County, Kenya
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Date
2015-07
Authors
Kombo, Kisilu
Jepketer, Annah
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Abstract
Quality of education, which manifests itself in many forms, has remained elusive. School
administrators, teachers, students, parents and education stakeholders have complained of
falling standards. Hence the need for investigation of the state of affairs and the mitigating
factors. One of these forms of concern under threat includes teachers’ preparation in training
colleges. The questions emerging here were: Why tutors are not able to train competent
teacher trainees? Could there be a problem with their teaching methodologies and
competencies in their areas of specialization? The purpose of the study was to investigate the
strategies for enhancing teacher educator competencies so as to improve the quality of
education in teacher training colleges in Nairobi County. Resistance and Change Theory
guided the study. The study used case study design. The researcher used 10% as population
sample size for education policy makers, teacher educators and teacher- trainees. The target
sample was 10 education policy makers, 1 teacher training college, 1 teacher training college
principal, 10 teachers and 50 teacher trainees. A simple random sampling technique was
employed in the study. Questionnaires were administered to education policy makers, teacher
educators, teacher trainees while the college principal was interviewed. Document analyses
on key education policies were undertaken. The study findings were: despite of the availability
of the qualified teacher educators, teacher competencies remained elusive; traditional
teaching methods were in use; monitoring of quality of teaching by quality assurance was low
and far between; teacher educators were hardly exposed to professional development and
research opportunities for improving their teaching methodologies; insecurity impacted
negatively on the teachers level of preparedness; in addition, insecurity affected them
psychologically, economically and socially; The conclusion drawn from this result was that
education quality in teacher training colleges in Nairobi County was under threat due to
waning competencies. Therefore, urgent measures should be put in place in order to reverse
the trend. Some of the recommendations were that stakeholders to be pro- active in coming up
with workable solutions; stakeholders to be proactive in addressing issues touching on
competencies and of quality education in teacher training colleges; in servicing teachers on
teaching methodologies; teachers to embrace e-learning; the teachers to be part of the
changes; Quality and standards assessment of quality to education should be strengthened
and corrective strategies for enhancing teacher competencies in teaching to be enhanced;
adequate proactive strategies ought to be developed to effectively address security challenges
in teacher training colleges.
Key words: Teacher Education, Education Quality, Competences, Threat
Description
Presentation
Keywords
Teacher Education, Education Quality, Competences, Threat
Citation
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Education. Nairobi, Kenya: Kenyatta University, July 14-16, 2015