Predictors of pre-school teachers’ scaffolding strategies of children’s socio-emotional competencies in Eldoret town, Kenya

Abstract

Scaffolding pre-school children’s socio-emotional competence (SEC) is important because it helps them recognize, understand and appropriately express their emotions as well as acknowledge the emotional expression of others. Domains of SEC include: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. Poor SEC in children predisposes them to poor academic performance and overall poor life outcomes. While it is assumed that SEC skills, like literacy and numeracy skills are taught to children explicitly or implicitly, studies show that globally many children lack SEC. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of pre-school teachers’ attributes and school predictors on the strategies they used to scaffold SEC skills in children. The study was based on Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Bio- ecological systems theory which describes the influence of the environment on one’s development. The study adopted a pragmatic world view and used the mixed research methods design to investigate the strategies that pre-school teachers used to scaffold SEC in children within Eldoret town, Kenya. It focused on one dependent variable: the strategies that pre-school teachers used and six independent variables: teachers’ training level, their experience in pre-school teaching, their gender, pre-school category, pre-school class size and children’s developmental level. There were 160 registered public and private pre-schools within Eldoret town. Two pre-schools in each category were randomly selected for piloting. A sample size of 301 teachers from 127 pre-schools was selected for the study. The specific schools participating in the study were randomly sampled. Three Pre-school teachers were purposively selected from each stratum. Where there were more than three pre-school teachers, simple random sampling was done. Pre-schools that did not have the three developmental stages were excluded from the study and in schools with more than two streams more than one teacher was included in the study for each developmental level. Data were collected using questionnaires, observation checklist and interview schedules whose validity was established through expert advice and triangulation of data sources. Reliability was established through test-retest that gave an internal consistency of r = 0.80. The quantitative data was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics utilizing Statistical Package for Social Science with the statistical significance level set at .05. Qualitative data was analysed for SEC strategies using predetermined themes. The study found a significant effect of pre-school teachers’ experience on strategies used to scaffold social awareness skills; p = 0.003. However, there was no statistically significant effect of pre-school teachers’ training levels, the pre-school teachers’ gender, pre-school type, pre-school class sizes and pre-school children’s’ developmental level and the strategies teachers used to scaffold SEC components in children. The study established that pre-school teachers focused more on self-management and relationship management strategies. The study was significant in that it gives information on when and how children are helped to develop SEC. This study recommends that policy makers and educators should support children’s holistic development by supporting the establishment of a curriculum that incorporates SEC programs in early childhood education learning system. Further, continuing teachers’ education programs that focus on SEC in children be encouraged and efforts made to retain experienced pre-school teachers in pre-school teaching.