Teacher Factors Affecting The Implementation Of Early Childhood Development And Education Curriculum In Mathira East Sub-County, Nyeri County, Kenya

ABSTRACT

Teachers play an important role in the implementation of Early Childhood Development Education (ECDE). Nevertheless, in Mathira Sub-County, a concern has been raised by various reports that the area still lacks an elaborate framework that can make ECDE operate well. Moreover most ECDE centres do not meet the National ECDE service standard guidelines yet teacher related factors contributing to this phenomenon have not been established. The purpose of the study was thus to find out influence of teacher based factors (qualifications, attitude and learning environment teachers provided to learners) on curriculum implementation in public ECDE Centres in Mathira East Sub County. The study was guided by the curriculum implementation theory by Gross (1971) and adopted the descriptive survey design. The target population comprised all the 41 ECDE Centres in Mathira East Sub County, 41 head teachers and 62 ECDE teachers. Simple random sampling technique was used to select a sample of 21 (50%) of public pre-schools and teachers (one from each of the sampled schools) while the 21 head teachers were purposively. Data was collected using an observation checklist and questionnaires for head teachers and teachers. Before the actual data collection, the instruments were piloted in 4 ECDE Centres. Validity of the research instruments was ascertained by ensuring that the questionnaire items conformed to the study objectives, while split half technique was used to find out the reliability of the research instruments and a correlation coefficient computed using spearman rank correlation at a 0.8coefficient. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics namely mean, frequencies and percentages after which the findings were presented using tables, bar-graphs and pie-charts. The study established that, the curriculum instruction in ECDE Centres in Mathira East Sub–County was largely compliant with the recommendations of Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD). Findings also showed that majority of pre-school teachers did not prepare professional documents. However, majority of the respondents kept updated pupils health records. The study recommended that the school stakeholders such as school administration, government and parents should examine the various ways of ensuring adequate availability of appropriate teaching and learning materials. More essentially, the government through the ministry of education should come up with programs and policies of providing adequate and appropriate teaching and learning materials in ECDE centers. It is further recommended that that all stakeholders should be involved in implementation of ECD programmes. These include government, local councils, traditional leaders, political leaders, private sector as well as parents