Discipline strategies used on students and their influence on academic performance: a case of Rachuonyo north sub-County, Homabay County

Abstract

Students in Rachuonyo North Sub County have been performing poorly in Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education over the past years. The focus of this research was to look into discipline strategies specifically suspension, manual labour and sending students home to call their parents and how these strategies influence students’ academic performance. The objectives of the study were; to determine the influence of discipline strategies on academic performance of students, to investigate the influence of discipline strategies on academic performance by gender, and to determine the influence of discipline strategies on academic performance by academic level. The study was significant since it provided insight on the influence of discipline strategies on academic performance of students. The study was based on the Attribution theory by Heider. The research design used was causal comparative. The researcher used simple random sampling to select 23 schools and 5 teachers per school and then purposive sampling was used to identify students at different educational levels who had received any of these discipline strategies. Data was collected using a teachers’ questionnaires and students document analysis. After piloting, the reliability index was found to be adequate at .74 and expert judgement was used to determine validity. Data was analysed with the help of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (V20.0). Descriptive statistics including, means, frequencies, and percentages and standard deviations were used for data presentation. The quantitative data was analysed using paired sample t-test, one way ANOVA and repeated measures analysis of variance at .05 level of significance. The study findings indicated that suspension influenced students’ academic performance negatively [t(70) = 2.53, p < .05]. However, manual labour had a positive influence on academic performance [t (11) = 2.39, p < .05] and sending students home to call their parents had a slight positive influence on students’ performance [t (9) = .06, p < .05]. It was also found that girls performed poorly after these discipline strategies had been used on them [t (25) = 2.35, p < .05]. However, there was no significant difference in academic performance of boys after the discipline strategies [t (67) = .86 p < .05]. The discipline strategies had a significant influence on the academic performance of the students at different academic level [F (1,92) = 468.646, p = .000]. From the findings, it was concluded that suspension influenced students’ performance negatively while manual labour and sending students home to call their parents did not. It was also evident that girls performed poorly compared to boys after these discipline strategies had been used on them. The study recommends that the three discipline strategies should not be used on girls. However, the study recommends manual labour and sending students home to call their parents for boys.