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Kenya has 41 Deaf schools that serve children from Class 1 through secondary school. These schools are all characterised by the fact that they have very few teachers who are fluent in Kenyan sign language. In order to meet the needs of schools and to provide employment opportunities for Deaf Kenyan adults, a small non-governmental organisation identified Deaf secondary school students for training. They received two years of teacher training free of charge. Most have since been awarded...

Kenya’s post-colonial education system, like many in Sub-Saharan Africa, has endured many challenges. High enrollment in primary schools is often coupled with low completion rates in secondary and postsecondary education. In this article we examine some of the processes that may lead to the disempowerment and disenfranchisement of youth in Kenyan schools, and report on a new approach that we call “Uhusiano Design for Learning”. Uhusiano Design focuses on three aspects of learner-centered...

This paper investigates the perceptions of teachers from one Sabaot dominated primary school in western Kenya regarding the medium of instruction (MoI) policy in different class levels. While their ‘ideal’ MoI policy bears some resemblance to the official policy which advocates mother tongue (MT) as medium in lower primary and English in upper primary, it also has significant differences because of the teachers' desire to move learners as quickly as possible from MT to Kiswahili and English....

This paper investigates the perceptions of teachers from one Sabaot dominated primary school in western Kenya regarding the medium of instruction (MoI) policy in different class levels. While their "ideal" MoI policy bears some resemblance to the official policy which advocates mother tongue (MT) as medium in lower primary and English in upper primary, it also has significant differences because of the teachers' desire to move learners as quickly as possible from MT to Kiswahili and English....

Research has shown that the development of cognitive and social skills in preschool predicts school readiness in kindergarten. However, most longitudinal studies are short-term, tracking children's development only through the early elementary school years. This study aims to investigate the long-term impact of preschool predictors, intelligence, and mothers' education on grade six school performance. This study presents the results of an eight-year-long longitudinal study. The sample...

We evaluated a program to improve literacy instruction on the Kenyan coast using training workshops, semiscripted lesson plans, and weekly text-message support for teachers to understand its impact on students' literacy outcomes and on the classroom practices leading to those outcomes. The evaluation ran from the beginning of Grade 1 to the end of Grade 2 in 51 government primary schools chosen at random, with 50 schools acting as controls. The intervention had an impact on classroom...

We evaluated a program to improve literacy instruction on the Kenyan coast using training workshops, semiscripted lesson plans, and weekly text-message support for teachers to understand its impact on students' literacy outcomes and on the classroom practices leading to those outcomes. The evaluation ran from the beginning of Grade 1 to the end of Grade 2 in 51 government primary schools chosen at random, with 50 schools acting as controls. The intervention had an impact on classroom...

In Kenya, Kiriri Women's University of Science and Technology has opened in a bid to improve women's access to science and technology courses. Kiriri, which is only the second women's university in East and Central Africa, will initially offer courses in mathematics and computer science and will later provide courses in physics, biology, and actuarial sciences.

This study investigated the relationship between socio-economic status, school-level variables and mathematics achievement of sixth graders in Kenya and Zimbabwe. The study is based on secondary data collected by the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ III). SACMEQ employed cluster-sampling procedures to collect data from 4412 students in 193 schools in Kenya, and 3021 students in 155 schools in Zimbabwe. A multilevel model (Hierarchical linear...

One of the major aims of vision 2030 is to ensure Kenya becomes a middle-income economy through industrialization. In the year 2017, Competence-Based Education (CBE) was introduced to produce school graduates with self-efficacy, self-reliance, effective communication, problem-solving, innovation, and digital literacy competencies. However, for students to acquire the competencies, quality teacher training is significant. This study sought to determine how teachers are trained for teaching...

To create a radical change within the educational system in public primary schools in Kenya, there is need to invest more on stakeholder capacity building specifically on monitoring and evaluation educational programme. The purpose of this article is to establish the extent to which stakeholder capacity building for monitoring and evaluation influence performance of literacy and numeracy educational programme. Despite numerous initiatives by key stakeholders to better performance of pupils...

Performance in Mathematics among pupils in lower primary schools in Kenya is a problem that continues to be a concern to parents, teachers and stakeholders in education. Teacher related factors and in particular teacher preparedness has been cited as a major contributing factor to poor teaching methods which fundamentally translates to pupils' poor performance. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the influence of teacher preparedness on pupils' performance in Mathematics in lower...

This book, consisting of a series of discussion papers and case studies, is a compilation of the papers presented at a region 1 workshop on participatory research in Africa. Included in the volume are the following discussion papers: "The Concept of Development in the Social Sciences," by Kemal Mustafa and Deborah Bryceson; "The Politics of Research Methodology in the Social Sciences," by Marjorie Mbilinyi, Ulla Vuorela, Yusuf Kassam, and Yohana Masisi; "The Methodology of the Participatory...

Rapid advancements in technology are creating new opportunities for educators to enhance their classroom techniques with digital learning resources. Once used solely outside of the classroom, smartphones, tablets, and e-readers are becoming common in many school settings. "Advancing Higher Education with Mobile Learning Technologies: Cases, Trends, and Inquiry-Based Methods" examines the implementation and success of mobile digital learning tools. With the inclusion of data on specific...

School-based improvement programs represent a core strategy in improving education because they can leverage pre-existing social and organizational structures to promote coordinated and comprehensive change across multiple facets of schooling. School-based programs are generally designed to be implemented by intact schools/districts, frequently making it infeasible or atheoretical to assign students within the same school to different conditions while ensuring study validity. Rather, studies...

The widespread move toward a free basic education for all in developing nations has raised parents' and policymakers' interest in secondary education. In general, policymakers in such countries, as well as many development strategists, believe that there is a link between secondary education and the opportunity to compete vigorously in a global economy. Some of the challenges to secondary education in developing countries are discussed.

In this study, we draw on three interrelated concepts, i.e. placed resources, multiliteracies and the carnivalesque, to understand how information and communication technology (ICT) resources are taken up within the context of a print-based journalism club. Our research participants attend an under-resourced girls’ residential secondary school in rural Kenya. We used ethnographic methods to document how the 32 club members (aged 14–18 years) used digital cameras, voice recorders and laptops...

Characteristic of the twenty-first century are new literacy practices that require users and producers to be fluent with the affordances of multiple modes across print and digital media. In under-resourced contexts such as East Africa, these complex new multimodal practices have not been well documented. In this paper, we explore the context of an afterschool journalism club in rural Kenya as an informal learning space for 32 adolescent girls to realize multimodal text design following our...

In recent years, the government of Kenya has implemented programs with the hope of moving the country to middle-income status. The government has implemented the Digital Literacy Programme, distributing tablets to schools across the country, and also a new curriculum, promoting innovative teaching that includes digital literacy, learner-centered teaching, and relevance to students' lives. Our purpose in this research was to explore culturally sustaining teaching methods in line with the...

Achievement in mathematics is an issue of great concern not only to students and parents but also to employers and researchers in Kenya. This is because the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) has continuously reported dismal results in this area, and especially in geometry. Also, KNEC indicates that it presents difficulties to both the teachers and learners during instructional sessions. In an extension of research demonstrating causal effects of electronic learning environments on...