Pupils’ perception of parents and teachers motivational and modelling strategies on school attendance amongst primary school adolescent girls in Baringo County, Kenya

Abstract

Parents and teachers can be seen to play a key role in children’s school attendance. This may be especially more pronounced in areas of hardship such as Baringo County, where treatment of children is differential along the gender divide. The purpose of this study was to establish pupils’ perception of parents and teachers motivational and modelling strategies on school attendance amongst primary school adolescent girls in Baringo County. The objectives were: To find out the influence of motivational strategies adopted by parents and teachers on school attendance; to establish the effect of teachers and parents modeling strategies on school attendance; to determine the difference in teacher motivational and modeling strategies based on teacher characteristics. The study adopted a survey research design using mixed methods approach and guided by Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory and Porter and Lawler’s Expectancy Theory of Motivation. The study was based on the transformative paradigm. There were 656 primary schools in Baringo County with 140,011 pupils; 67,671 girls and 72,340 boys. The study targeted head teachers, class teachers and standard seven girls in public primary schools in the county. Multi-stage sampling was used to select 66 schools from the six sub-counties. All the head-teachers and class teachers from the selected schools participated in this study. Simple random sampling was used to select 30%(259) of the class seven pupils in each of the selected schools. Data was collected using questionnaire, interview schedule and document analysis Guide. Data was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistical techniques which include frequencies, percentages and means. The hypotheses were tested using Chi-square at significance level of 0.05. The analysis of the qualitative data was through aggregating the words or images into categories of information. Data was presented using frequency tables and graphs. The motivational strategies were identified as provision of basic needs, creating a gender friendly learning atmosphere and allowing girls to participate in co-curricular activities. The modeling strategies included appreciation of all pupils despite individual and cultural differences, providing constructive feedback and encouraging them to think positively. The findings indicated a statistically significant relationship between parents’ motivational strategies (χ 2 =274.90, df=8 and p = 0.000); teachers’ motivational strategies (χ 2 =16.21, df=4 and p = 0.01); teachers’ modeling strategies (χ 2 = 161.571, df =8 and p = 0.000); parents’ modeling strategies (χ 2 = 383.668, df=8 and sig = 0.000) and girls’ school attendance. The study recommended that parents should be encouraged to visit schools of their daughters frequently and create a good rapport with the teachers. The findings can be used by parents, teachers and policy makers to strategize on how to improve attendance of girls in primary schools in line with the need for sustainable development.