EVALUATION OF TEACHER SUPERVISION PRACTICES AND IMPLEMENTATION OF EARLY YEARS EDUCATION PROGRAMMEME IN KHWISERO SUB COUNTY, KENYA

Abstract

Early Years Education (EYE) is the crucial stage in the child’s physical, social, emotional, and intellectual development. With the promulgation of the Kenya Constitution in 2010, the responsibility of EYE was delegated to County governments. The Kenyan government, collaborating partners, and communities in general have devoted resources (human, financial, and time) to increase the quality of pre-school education services. However, preschool programmes are implemented with difficulties and anomalies, despite best efforts. According to the Ministry of Education and the Republic of Kenya, inadequate supervision is one of the issues affecting early years education.This study, therefore, sought to establish the relationship between teacher supervision practices and implementation of early years education programmes in the Khwisero Sub-county, Kenya. The specific objectives of the study were; to establish the effectiveness of teacher supervision practices in the implementation of the Early Years Education Programme; to find out the role of school administrators in the implementation of early years education programme, to suggest strategies for effective teacher supervision in the implementation of Early Years Education programme. The study used contextual interaction and Supervision theories. The study employed a cross-sectional survey research design. The population of this study consisted of 61 schools from the sub-county, 61 EYE teachers in-charge, 61 head teachers, 67 assistant teachers, 61 parent representatives, 1 Programme Officer, and 4 ward representatives from Khwisero Sub-County. From the result of Piloting, Cronbach reliability revealed that all constructs had a coefficient above 0.7 indicating that the instrument was reliable. Stratified random sampling was used in the selection of 10 schools from which purposive sampling was used to select 10 head teachers, 10 teachers in charge, 1 programme officer, and 4 ward representatives while random sampling was used to select 50 assistant teachers. Instruments that were used to collect data were questionnaires document analysis and interview guides. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 20 and the findings were presented in the form of frequency tables. The findings revealed less effective teacher supervisions practices (M=1.9-3.0) although with a significant association between the effectiveness of teacher supervision practices and programme implementation as shown by the Pearson Chi-Square test of association, ꭓ216, 0.05=45.073, (p<.05). School administrators were found to play a great role ranging from helping teachers understand school policies and supervision (M=3.3, STD=1.54) to hiring or acquiring of more staff (M=4.36, STD=.37), which significantly correlated with teacher supervision and programme implementation (r=.542, p<.05). Main strategies for programme implementation included professionalism (M=4.24, STD=.39), classroom visitation (M=4.08, .48) and in-service training (M=4.03, STD=.52), hence strategies for implementation significantly correlated with programme implementation (r=.612, p<.05). It was therefore concluded that good programme implementation was associated with teacher supervision practices, school administrators role positively enhanced programme implementation and the identified strategies have a positive influence on programme implmenetation. The study however recommends improvement in teacher supervision in ECDE centers, empowerment of school administartors to enhance teacher supervision and finally enhancement of more strategies to make program implmenetation more effective.The findins are therefore significant to the policy makers, the school administrators, other researchers and teachers at large since it provides vital inofmration that can be used to make critical changes in education sector particulary for ECDE programme implementation.