Open AccessThe perceptions of teacher trainers and trainees on the relevance of instructional resources for Creative Arts teacher education curriculum to learners needs in Kenya
Author(s) -
Keoro Andrew Nyamota,
Anne Syomwene Kisilu,
Peter L. Barasa
Publication year - 2018
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2411-2933
DOI - 10.31686/ijier.vol6.iss1.920
Subject(s) - curriculum , the arts , mathematics education , perception , relevance (law) , teacher education , descriptive statistics , medical education , psychology , qualitative research , stratified sampling , simple random sample , qualitative property , pedagogy , sociology , computer science , medicine , social science , visual arts , art , statistics , mathematics , pathology , neuroscience , machine learning , political science , law , population , demography
This paper is a report of a study that was carried out in the year 2017 on the perceptions of teacher trainers and trainees on the relevance of instructional resources for Creative Arts teacher education curriculum to learners’ needs in Kenya. The larger study from which this paper was drawn was on the perceptions of teacher trainers and trainees on the relevance of Creative Arts teacher education curriculum to learners’ and societal needs. This study was guided by Structural Functionalism Theory. The pragmatic paradigm was adopted in the study. The study used mixed methods research approach. These involved integrating the qualitative and quantitative approaches. Under this design, both the qualitative and quantitative data were collected concurrently, analyzed separately and then merged for interpretation of overall results. This study targeted teacher trainees, trainers and HoDs of Creative Arts drawn from public primary teacher training colleges in the western region of Kenya. Stratified and simple random sampling methods were used to select the sample whereby three hundred and ten participants were selected for the study. These comprised of 270 teacher trainees, 30 teacher trainers (tutors) and 10 HODs for Creative Arts. The research instruments used were teacher trainees’ questionnaire; the teacher trainers’ questionnaire; and the HoDs interview schedule. Data analysis was done by the use of descriptive statistics whereby frequencies and percentages were calculated using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software. The results of the study revealed that teacher trainees and trainers perceived resources such as song repertoire and audio-visuals among others as relevant to the learner and societal needs but inadequate. The instructional resources in the colleges were perceived to be inadequate and obsolete. Lack of rooms to accommodate practical teaching using the suggested resources was also of concern. It was recommended that colleges should endeavor to provide all the resources suggested in the syllabus and replace those that are obsolete. In addition, emphasis should be put on teaching the subject in a more practical way through the provision of time and space. The results of this study will be useful to pre-service teachers, teacher trainers, policymakers, and researchers, on curriculum development and implementation of Creative Arts curriculum for teacher education.