| dc.description.abstract | Headteachers as educational supervisors ensure that curriculum implementation takes place as required. Therefore, instructional supervisors' should maintain and strengthen interpersonal relation with teachers in order to create a mutual working relationship so as to steer the team towards the achievement of institution goals. If the attitude of one towards the other is negative, then the implementation process is likely to be crippled. There has been persistence of poor performance in KCSE in Lari district. This is evident in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) result analysis for central province for the years 2008-2009 as provided by the Provincial Director of Education (PDE).
The purpose of the study was to determine the perception of teacher's towards headteacher's instructional supervision practices in public secondary school in Lari district, Kenya. The research was conducted using survey method. The study targeted a total population of 32 headteachers from 32 secondary schools in Lari district, and 416 teachers, where a sample of 10 headteachers and 125 teachers were selected giving a total sample size of 135 respondents.
Data was collected using questionnaires for headteachers and teachers. A total of 135 questionnaires were administered out of which 102 were collected giving 76% response rate. The study considered a gender, educational level, and experience and age representation in sample selection. The study revealed that many teachers (56.4 percent) do not like being supervised by the headteachers because they feel they are self-driven, responsible and motivated, hence when tasks are clear it is not necessary to be directly supervised as they feel intimidated. In addition they also view the headteacher as intruding in their work and in a fault finding exercise.
To determine the effects of teachers characteristics and their perception of head teachers instructional supervision, a number of factors were crosstabulated with teachers perception towards supervision, age, educational level and job experience were found to influence teachers' perception towards head teachers' instructional supervision. The study on teacher respondents also revealed that age, academic qualification and teaching experience of the headteachers affects the supervisory practice of the headteacher. However, there was no. evidence of the gender of the teacher influencing perception towards instructional supervision in secondary schools.
To improve instructional supervision in secondary schools it was suggested that headteachers should lead from within in self rating to influence the group to achieve organization objectives efficiently. The Ministry of Education and Teacher Service Commission should organize seminars to improve headteachers supervision skills. In addition, promotion of teachers should be by merit to improve perception towards instructional supervision. | en_US |
