Language Of Instruction In Urban Children’s Homes: Status And Implications

ABSTRACT

This study is a sociolinguistic survey of the status of Language of Instruction (LOI) in

Children’s Homes. It considers the fact that there is a variety of languages at the disposal of the

children in CHs, who are a minority group in the society and so have no common language as

the educational language policy requires during schooling. The study, therefore, sought to

describe the status and implication of LOI in CHs in order to give empirical recommendation.

The literature reviewed showed that while pupils from CHs do not have immediate families to

nurture their first languages, their counterparts do, hence the gap this study fills. The Critical

Language Planning and Policy approach that is meant to reduce various forms of inequalities

was adopted to guide this study. The objectives of the study were to: identify the language(s)

used during classroom instruction in Children’s Homes; investigate the factors that influence or

motivate the choice of the language(s) used in classroom contexts and to identify the difficulties

faced in applying the national LOI policy in the lower primary school level in CHs in urban

centres. The language policy identifies mother tongues or the language of the catchment area as

the language of instruction. The survey data was collected from a sample of 76 respondents that

comprised teachers, administrators and pupils from a sample of six Children’s Homes in Nairobi

City. All the respondents were subjected to an interview. Questionnaires and document analysis

were also used. Data interpretation was both qualitative with Critical Content Analysis used in

the interview and qualitative questionnaire responses and quantitative with SPSS used in the

management of the quantitative data. The study revealed that there are many languages used in

class by both the teachers and the pupils in an effort to communicate including verbal and nonverbal

communication. A number of factors such as a common language, the language used in

the Home and the linguistic background influence the choice of language to use in class. It is not

likely to find Kiswahili or mother tongue a common language among the pupils of standard 1-3

from Children’s Homes. Whenever teachers use language as per the educational language

policy, they exclude some pupils especially those from Children’s Home.