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.