Tutors’ pedagogical strategies for implementing integrated literature at public primary teacher training colleges in Kenya.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine tutors’ pedagogical strategies for implementing integrated literature at public primary teacher training colleges in Kenya. The main variables of tutors’ strategies examined were tutors’ professional development, preparation of literature lessons, utilization of relevant instructional materials in the implementation of literature, teaching methodologies used to teach literature and classroom assessment of literature course. The study is based on John Dewey’s theory of learning. Survey research design was adopted for this study. The target population for this study comprised 19 public teacher training colleges, 19 heads of English and 114 tutors of literature. From this, 16 colleges participated in the actual study. From these colleges, 16 English heads, one from each college and 64 tutors, 4 from each college generated data for the study. The participants in the study were selected using purposive sampling. Colleges, heads of English and tutors who had participated in the implementation of integrated literature for at least five years and presented primary teacher education candidates for national examination for at least three years before this study, were purposively selected for inclusion in the study. The study used 3 research instruments for data collection namely, questionnaire for tutors of literature, interview schedule for heads of English and observation schedule for literature lessons. Data for this study was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences and descriptive statistics. Data is presented in text, tables, bar charts and pie charts. The study established that although majority of tutors had initial qualifications for teaching literature, only 5.6% of them were in-serviced and 36.4% of them were provided with readily prepared schemes of work by English heads meaning they do not personally plan their lessons. All the visited public teacher training colleges lacked audio visual teaching equipment and 69.2% of the colleges surveyed had insufficient literary texts. The study established that tutors did not integrate literature into English as they taught it as a distinct subject and 85.9% of them did not read the set literary texts with the students. It was also found that 93.7% of literature teacher trainers relied merely on the compulsory end of term assessments for literature evaluation most of which they did not participate in setting. The study concluded that implementation of literature course at public teacher training colleges in Kenya was inefficient. The study recommends enhanced continuous professional development of tutors, hands on practice by tutors in preparation of literature lessons, equipping of public teacher training colleges with relevant and sufficient literary texts as well as audio visual teaching gadgets, emphasis on integrative approach in the teaching of English and literature and review of assessment techniques on literature.