Teachers’ Instructional Strategies In Insha And Their Influence On Class Seven Pupils’ Performance In Garissa County-Kenya

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of teachers‟ instructional strategies on class seven pupils‟ Insha performance. Kiswahili is a compulsory subject tested at both Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (K.C.P.E.) and Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (K.C.S.E.) national examinations. Insha is tested as a paper in both examinations. It accounts for 40 out of 90 (44.44%) and 40 out of 200 (20 %) marks of the overall K.C.P.E. and K.C.S.E. mark respectively. Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) reports dating back to 1985 (K.C.P.E.) and 1989 (K.C.S.E.) indicate that candidates have not been performing well in Insha. Previous research on Insha has not addressed the problem. This research sought to establish whether the teaching strategies used by primary school teachers in Insha contribute to the poor performance. The study was guided by four objectives namely: to investigate the preparations made by teachers in teaching Insha in class seven, investigate the methods and resources used by teachers in teaching Insha, assess the impact of the methods and resources used by Insha teachers on learners‟ performance and find out assessment methods used by teachers in assessing Insha. This study was anchored on the theory of educational productivity advanced by Walberg (1984), the theory views educational process in terms of its power to produce outcomes. According to Walberg (1984) there are nine factors that are required to increase affective, behavioral, and cognitive learning. He asserted that these “potent, consistent, and widely generalizable” factors fall into three groups: student aptitude, instruction, and environment. Student aptitude includes: Ability or prior achievement as measured by the usual standardized tests; development, as indexed by chronological age or stage of maturation and Motivation, or self- concept as indicated by personality tests or the student‟s willingness to persevere intensively on learning tasks. The study used the survey research design. It involved 14 public primary schools. These were the only accessible schools from the study sample of 19 public primary schools. The non-probability sampling technique was therefore employed because all the accessible schools were involved. Data was collected using a questionnaire, an observation schedule and an Insha test. Simple random sampling was used to select one school that was sampled for the pilot study. The Test-retest technique of reliability testing was used whereby the pilot questionnaires were administered twice to the respondents, with a one week interval, to allow for reliability testing. The scores were then correlated using Pearson ProductMoment Correlation formula to determine the reliability coefficient. In order to check content validity the researcher sought expert opinions where the instruments were discussed in line with the objectives. The ambiguous questions were discarded and the ones which were not in line with the objectives were also discarded. The target population was Kiswahili teachers teaching class seven and their class seven pupils in Garissa County. The questionnaire was administered to class seven Kiswahili teachers. It had both structured and unstructured questions. An Insha test was administered to class seven pupils. This was important in finding out the reality of the problem. An observation schedule was used to collect data through observation of actual Insha lessons. Collected quantitative data was analyzed by use of descriptive statistics, which involved frequencies, percentages and the mean while the qualitative data was thematically analyzed. Findings of this study are expected to improve teachers‟ pedagogical aspects. This is expected to address the perennial poor performance in Insha in Garissa county and North Eastern region.