Qualities of Effective Secondary School Teachers and Selection Criteria for Teacher Trainees in Kenya: Students' Perspective

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the qualities of effective secondary school teachers, and consequently develop a scale to be used in the recruitment of teacher trainees who are likely to be effective. A total of 547 participants drawn from National, provincial, and District secondary schools from Nyanza, Western and Rift Valley provinces were involved in this study. Purposive and stratified Simple Random sampling techniques were used to select and recruit these participants. This study used a mixed research design whereby both qualitative and quantitative methods were involved. The first approach sought free responses, whereby participants were asked to describe in their own words the qualities of the most effective (best) teacher on a blank sheet of paper. Secondly, participants were given a questionnaire containing items on the qualities of the effective teachers and were required to give structured responses. For the first approach, data was analyzed qualitatively. Participants' responses were grouped into themes that captured the qualities of effective secondary school teachers. While in the second approach, the statements contained in the questionnaire were coded and analyzed quantitatively using inferential statistics. Exploratory factor analysis was used to analyze the inferential statistics. This study revealed that students perceived effective secondary school secondary school teachers as those who possessed cognitive, pedagogical, affective, professional, spiritual and counseling qualities. Secondly, a selection Criteria for recruitment of teacher trainees into Teacher Training Programmes was developed. This criteria include most of the qualities of effective teacher in the reviewed literature. The findings of this study are useful in enhancing professional development, strengthening evaluation and selection of effective secondary school teachers and improvement of the quality of education system.