Abstract:
The study investigated the perceptions of parents and teachers on the use of corporal
punishment in pre-primary institutions. The objectives of the study was to investigate
the attitudes of parents and teachers towards corporal punishment ban in pre-schools;
to investigate whether the level of education of parents and teachers had an influence
on the use of corporal punishment and also find out instances when corporal
punishment was used. The study located itself on Structural Functionalism theory
which views culture as the expression of the totality of an individual and every
material object, language, idea, religion, belief and custom fulfils a vital function in
maintaining the whole society. Reinforcement theory explains that social behaviour is
governed by external events; these events can reinforce, punish or extinguish
behaviour. A descriptive survey design was used. Stratified sampling was used to
select the pre-schools; simple random sampling was applied to select all the teachers
in the sampled pre-schools. Incidental sampling was employed to select parents of the
sampled schools. Data was collected through questionnaires. The data was analyzed
both quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings indicated that both parents and
teachers perceived negatively the outlawing of corporal punishment, the level of
education had no influence on the use of corporal punishment for both parents and
teachers and instances when corporal punishment was used by both parents and
teachers were non-academic. The government and specifically the policymakers in the
ministry of education will be the main beneficiaries of this study. It will come in
handy when they are interrogating educational policies and long held values in the
society. The study recommended that the government investigates why parents prefer
corporal punishment to other methods of behaviour modification. The government
should also rethink the teacher training programmes and the teachers' role in the
education system. Since non-academic offences attracted higher instances of corporal
punishment the government should rethink the ban from schools to homes. The
research should be replicated in other levels of school. A comparative study on the
impact of the various methods of modifying deviant behaviour should be done.
