Education

It is unanimously accepted that independence did not deliver the African masses from the burden of life-insuffering. It is thus necessary to persist in the attempts to elucidate those murky aspects of the colonial past and postcolonial present which may resolve the conundrum of failed independence. This paper intervenes in this undertaking by endeavouring to examine the mind-work of the leaders who steered the nationalist project and determined to a large extent its outcome. This mind-work, which crucially involves the nationalist leaders' understanding and representation of their own selves, finds expression in their writings. This paper, therefore, concerns itself with the representation by East African nationalist leaders of their identities in their writings, selves that are at marked variance with their true inner core, the ghost within. In their writings, they focus their energy and attention on concealing their ambition-deformed personalities behind the masks of the positive selfidentities they construct. In the resultant hide-and-seek game with their peoples, the opportunity for selfless leadership and genuine service to nation-building is lost. Constructivist research methodology will be used in the study.

There has been remarkable increase in access of ICT equipment in teacher education institutions. However, reports indicate that teacher educators are not integrating these technologies in their instruction in ways that make a difference in student learning. To help teachers make informed decisions on student learning, there is need for current knowledge of teachers' integration practices. Research findings from developed countries indicate that there has been considerable progress in this area in many teacher education institutions. But the status of the integration of ICT by teacher educators in Kenyan teachers colleges is largely unknown. This study therefore was set to determine the level at which teacher educators in public primary teachers colleges have integrated ICT in their instruction. The simple random sampling was used to select six teachers colleges and 169 respondents who participated in the study. Data was collected using a questionnaire, an interview schedule and an observation schedule. The Data collected were analyzed descriptively with the help of SPSS program version 16.0 for frequencies, means, standard deviation and percentages. The results indicated that there is a low level of ICT integration into teaching in all teachers colleges. Based on the findings, it is recommended that ICTs integration be made part of undergraduate training in universities order to equip future teacher educators with ICT skills; that the government should equip teachers colleges with sufficient and modern computers with internet connectivity to enhance access; colleges should provide in-service training on ICTs for teachers. Furthermore, colleges should hire technicians to maintain and service available ICTs. The ministry of education should also embrace ICT and demand professional documents from teacher educators be typed and send online. Additionally, college should not rely only on government funding but earn their own income by initiating ICT training centres to train outsiders in their colleges. Finally, it should be mandated that all college principals be knowledgeable in ICTs so as to support ICT initiatives in teacher education institutions.

The importance of poetry in enhancing the development and growth of students' intellectual, emotional, social and linguistic aspects is well documented. However, there is poor performance by students in poetry at the KCSE examinations due to the negative attitude students hold towards poetry instruction. This may be alleviated by effective CL models capable of boosting students' academic achievement, attitudes and liking of school. This study investigated the impact of LTM on students' attitudes towards poetry. The pretest-posttest quasiexperimental design was employed because school authorities do not allow randomization of individual students. 199 Form three students located in six secondary school classes took part. Results revealed higher attitude for students using LTM than those in regular classes. The study concludes that LTM has pedagogical implications for poetry instruction.

The research project entitled "Effect of Electronic Point of Sale System on the Operational Efficiency of Hotels in Nakuru County" and written by Lawi Chirchir is presented to the Institute of Postgraduate Studies of Kabarak University. We have reviewed the research project and recommend it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for award of the degree of Master of Business Administration in Operations Management.

Despite the evidence of the existence of strategic plans in learning institutions in Kenya, the greatest impediment to successful use of these strategies in education has been failure by institutions to implement them. Indeed, previous studies have shown that crafting strategic plans is a lot easier than to make them happen. Public secondary schools in Kenya are facing the problem of successfully implementing their strategic plans amidst the ministry of education’s demand for written strategies as well as stiff competition from private schools. The objective of this study was to unearth the factors that impede the implementation of strategic plans in selected secondary schools in Baringo district. The focus of the study was on variables such as human resources, leadership style, organizational structure and culture of schools. The research employed the descriptive research design. The target population of the study was the 21 secondary schools and 329 teachers in the district. A sam...

The presumed importance of technology in enhancing students’ motivation may call for a profound shift in pedagogy. In an attempt to inform evidence-based practice, this study examined the influence of videos mediated instructions on students’ motivation towards learning Kiswahili proverbs in a sample of secondary schools of equal ability in Nakuru County, Kenya. A Solomon Four quasi-experiment research design was used. The 436 students who participated in this study had a mean age of 16.2 years (SD = 0 .89) with a nearly equal sex distribution. The 43 five-point Likert type motivation items used were reduced into three dimensions: affective, behavioral, and cognitive by use of factor analytic methods. Regression analyses highlight equivocal effects of technology on these three dimensions of motivation while teacher experience was a notable confounder. Pre-test effects were also evident. The study has important implications for promoting more ambitious teaching methods.

Guidance and counselling constitute the best approach to help children and their families deal with life’s frustrating issues. In the school context, guidance and counselling services assist the school to manage discipline and deal with the influence of social evils on learners and the learning environment. However, for guidance and counselling services to be effective in schools, several factors must be put in place. Among these factors, the key is school management support for guidance and counselling services. In recognition of this fact, the study examined the influence of the schools’ management attitudes towards guidance and counselling on the implementation of guidance and counselling programmes in secondary schools in Baringo Central Sub-County. The study used the descriptive survey research method. It relied on a sample of 36 secondary schools with 36 principals and 72 teacher-counsellors. The research employed a questionnaire to collect the data. The collected data was the...

The need for effective coverage of secondary school syllabi is crucial in Kenya and the world at large. The problem which this study sought to determine was ineffective coverage of Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) Biology syllabus in secondary schools in the Sub County. The objective of this study was to establish the influence of teacher related factors on effective coverage of KCSE Biology syllabus in Secondary Schools in Rongai Sub-County, Kenya. The study was grounded on curriculum implementation theory and adopted correlational design. The study was based in Nakuru Rongai Sub-County secondary schools. The target population of this study comprised of 151 Biology teachers and 120 form four class secretaries. Census method was used to sample Biology teachers and class secretaries. In this study, content validity of the instrument was determined by research supervisors from Kabarak University who read the content, look at the items and ensured that they reflect the actual content area. This study used test retest method of determining reliability of research instrument. Data was collected using a questionnaire. The findings revealed that teacher related factors significantly influence on effective Coverage of Biology Syllabus (β = 0.390; p<0.05). The study concludes that factors such as teacher transfers, topics that are too wide in Biology and negative attitude towards some topics influence significantly effective syllabus coverage. It is herein recommended that teacher transfers should be managed appropriately in order to improve coverage of KCSE Biology Syllabus. Moreover, in-service training of teachers should be enhanced by Ministry of education in order to resolve negative attitude towards some topics. Finally, teachers should be adequately equipped with new technologies, pedagogical techniques and appropriate instructional resources in order to achieve effective coverage of Biology syllabus.

Employee turnover occurs when workers leave an organization and need to be replaced by new recruits. High employee turnover is a common occurrence in the teaching profession in Kenya. Poor remuneration has often been given as a cause of low morale among teachers, but literature shows that salary is not a sufficient condition for job satisfaction. This implies that there are certain factors that influence labour turnover among public secondary school TSC teachers in Kenya. It is for this reason that the study was designed to examine the institutional factors responsible for the teacher turnover phenomenon within secondary schools in Baringo District, Kenya. The study was guided by the Herzberg’s motivation theory. Descriptive survey research design was used. All the 21 public secondary schools in Baringo district were involved. The simple random sampling technique was employed to select 97 teachers out of the total population of the 329 TSC teachers in the District to participate in ...

This study set out to identify the availability and extent of the use of instructional materials in the teaching and learning of Igbo language in Obollo-Afor Educational Zone. The work adopted a survey design and two research questions guided the study. Instrument for data collection was a researcher made questionnaire with 40 items. The data obtained were analyzed using percentage, mean and standard deviation. The results indicated that most of the instructional resources were not available in the schools, while the few available ones were utilized to low and very low extent. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that government should provide resources for Igbo language instruction and that seminars and workshops should be organized for the teachers on the importance of using instructional materials in delivering their lessons.

This paper discusses the speeches of the late Jomo Kenyatta, founding President of the Republic of Kenya. It focuses on one of the books that Kenyatta wrote Suffering without Bitterness and interrogates how he uses this literary text to navigate against the prevailing representations of him to construct his identities that portray him as a nationalist leader. The paper proceeds from the understanding that literature envoices the human person and subjectivises him. It constitutes an ideal arena for the subject's intense mental work and of his revealing of himself to the world. This paper argues that it is in Kenyatta's text that he constructs his identities. Suffering without Bitterness contains a great deal of knowledge regarding Kenyatta's character insofar as it applies to the contemporary Kenyan reality. In particular, this paper argues that from Suffering without Bitterness we acquire a great deal of knowledge concerning the processes of Kenyatta's identity formation insofar as it relates to the way he constructs his sense of self and relate it to his circumstances. It will be recalled that it is primarily on the basis of the frames of reference that we possess as individuals, or authors, that we are able to asses and make sense out of our circumstances. We construct our identities on the basis of our differential relationships with one another, on the basis of which we delineate a "space" that possesses attributes that are different from all other entities in the universe and are, therefore, unique.

The workplace in the modern world continues to demand higher qualifications and refined competencies. In the recent past, workers would respond to such demands through learning by correspondence. When the Internet and e-Learning emerged, it received widespread accolade as a solution to the challenges experienced by distant learners. The technology was also seen as an opportunity for educational institutions to leverage their technological uptake to benefit regular students. However, desktop computers and Internet connectivity, which were the drivers of e-learning technologies, were expensive, bulky and scarce. So when mobile technologies emerged, educationist saw an opportunity for addressing the limitations associated with correspondence, "e" and tethered learning. Mobile devices being cheap, portable and reliable received widespread acceptance and possession. So, educators, hardware designers and program developers started to design hardware and applications that would infuse learning content into the devices. The purpose of this review is to demonstrate the potential of mobile technologies in the education market place, highlighting global initiatives and trends. The paper will also review how universities around the world, Africa and in Kenya have oriented themselves for learning with mobile technologies. The study was a documentary analysis of virtual documents stored electronically for access through the Internet, text books, archival repositories and encyclopedias. The study observed a significant high global mobile ownership and usage rates, but was able to demonstrate that despite its pedagogical advantages, the use of the technology for learning purposes at university level is still at the infantry.

A lot of scholarly research articles have lauded the positive significant contribution of Cooperative Learning Approach (CLA) and its effect on student's academic achievement. However none of those studies have been conducted on English subject, therefore this study investigated how the use of CLA affects students' academic achievement in English in public coeducational secondary schools in Nakuru County. The study adopted quasi experimental design, based on Solomon Four-group, Non-equivalent Control Group Design. The study involved two Experimental groups, E1 and E2 which were taught through CLA method and two Control groups, C1 and C2 which were taught through the Conventional methods. The target populations were students and teachers from the four co-educational public secondary schools of Nakuru County. The accessible population was 766 form three students in the four schools. The study sample size was 242 Form three students from the four coeducational public secondary schools in Nakuru County. The study used English Achievement Test (EAT) to collect quantitative data. Data was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 24). Comparing the mean gain for the two groups of students', it was established that students using cooperative learning approach were 12% higher in English achievement test as compared to their peers who were taught using conventional methods. The study concluded that there was statistically significant effect of cooperative learning approach on students' achievement of English in public coeducational secondary schools in Nakuru, County Kenya (F(1,216)=113043.974, p<0.05). The study further concluded that use of cooperative learning approach improves student achievement in English compared to use conventional methods. The study recommended teachers to adopt modern constructivism approaches to teaching students especially Cooperative learning approach that is student centered.