Influences of Scope and Coverage of the Syllabus On Implementation of the Curriculum for Physics for Secondary Schools in Kenya

Abstract

Kenya in the vision 2030 endeavor to expand her development in infrastructure and industry; leading to urbanization and middle level economy (Republic of Kenya, 2010). If the Kenyan government is to meet her goal by the year 2030 then she must expand her E ducation in science and technology by improving efficacy in curriculum implementation in order to produce the required human resource. In contrast over the years students’ performance in Physics at Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) has been l ow coupled with low students’ enrollment. Little was known regarding influence of scope and coverage of the syllabus on the implementation of the curriculum for Physics. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of scope and coverage of the syllabus on implementation of the curriculum for Physics for secondary schools. This study was guided by cognitive constructivism theory of learning and adopted pragmatism research paradigm, mixed method approach and triangulation design. This study targe ted 224 teachers of Physics and 4140 Form three Physics students in 283 public a secondary schools in Bungoma County. Stratified and simple random techniques were used to select 22 schools. The Head of Subject (HOS) were purposively sampled from each selected school. The sample size was 22 teachers and 393 students making a total of 415 respondents. Data was collected between September and October, 2017 using Teacher Questionnaire (TQ), Student Questionnaire (SQ), Lesson Observation Schedule (LOS) and Obse rvation Checklists (OC). Data was presented using frequency tables, figures and photographs and analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics used to analyze quantitative data include; percentages and means while the in ferential statistics used include; Chi -square and Pearson Product- Moment correlation. Qualitative data was analyzed thematically. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 was used to compute the analysis at α = 0.05 level of significance. Both quantitative and qualitative results showed that a wide scope of the syllabus leads to failure to cover the syllabus in time hence influenced the implementation of the curriculum for Physics. The study concluded that the scope of the syllabus be cover ed in -depth and timely. The study recommended that the syllabus for Physics should be revised. The study findings provide an opportunity for teachers to improve on their classroom practices.