Guidance And Counseling Strategies Used By Pre-School Teachers In Managing Children’s Social-Emotional Behavioural Problems In Nakuru Municipality, Kenya.

ABSTRACT

Experience in early childhood education has shown that there is need to respond to the many types of complex social issues and economic trends affecting children in developing countries as a result of family adjustments and disruptions. In the Kenyan traditional society, the family set-up was anchored on extended family arrangements and children were mainly counseled by the grandparents, aunties, uncles and other relatives. This ensured a solid background which was healthy for the developing person. However in the contemporary society the traditional family set up has broken down. There is less contact between children and their grandparents, aunties and uncles. Parents have also become too busy and this has resulted to children being taken to school too early some barely three years old. Parents’ absence and reliance on pre-school teachers seems to create an emotional gap. Children like adults have many issues that affect their emotional growth and development. Like children of other stages, pre-school children require guidance and counseling to deal with behavioral and emotional problems in order to realize their optimum development and learning performance. The study was carried out to explore the guidance and counseling strategies pre-school teachers use in managing social-emotional behaviour problems of pre-school children. It also investigated the causes of socialemotional problems among children and the challenges teachers face. The study was carried out in Nakuru Municipality and it was guided by Erik Erikson’s Theory of psychosocial development and Skinner’s Behavioural Theory. Survey research design was used in this study to obtain information about guidance and counseling strategies, social and emotional problems and behavior management in pre-schools classrooms and during children outdoor activities. To ensure maximum variations in the characteristics of ECD centers selected for the study, purposive sampling was done to obtain 8 schools from which16 pre-school teachers were interviewed. Teachers were interviewed to find out how they deal with children having social-emotional problems. Observation was also done to see some of the indictors of social-emotional problem among children. Data was analyzed qualitatively where the information obtained was organized into themes and categories by first tidying up the data, finding the items, creating stable items, creating patterns and assembling groups of related or linked patterns that come up with an overall description of the problem being studied. The findings showed that there were a considerable number of pre-school children who had social-emotional problems that affect their behaviour and school performance. Such behaviour problems included inability to play, appearing moody and worried and being not attentive. The causes of these problems were mainly domestic conflict and poverty. Guidance and counseling strategies teachers used played a great role in helping pre-school children change behaviour and improve their learning performance. These included involving parents and talking to the children as individual or groups. Teachers faced many challenges when dealing with social emotionally disturbed children. Such challenges included, some parents not heeding to their call or denying there is a problem. The researcher has recommended that there is need for a trained teacher counselor in each pre-school. There is also need for referrals to be made for children with serious behaviour problems. This would go a long way in realizing healthy development in early childhood and hence avoid maladjusted adults in future.