Discipline strategies: Influence on gender and academic level of students: A case of Rachuonyo North sub-county, Homabay county, Kenya

Abstract

This paper purposed to establish if there was a significant influence ofdiscipline strategies on student academic performance based on the gender andacademic level of students in Homabay County, Kenya. Over the years,students in Rachuonyo North Sub County have continued to perform poorlyin Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (K.C.S.E). The objective of thisstudy is to determine the influence of discipline strategies on academicperformance by gender and academic level. The research design used wascausal comparative. The researcher used simple random sampling to select 23schools. Purposive sampling was used to identify students at differentacademic levels who had received any of the three discipline strategies that issuspension, manual labour, and sending students home to call their parent. Thequantitative data was analyzed using paired sample t-test and repeatedmeasures ANOVA at .05 level of significance. The study findings indicatedthat girls performed poorly after discipline strategies had been used on them.However, there was no significant difference in the academic performance ofboys after the discipline strategies. It emerged that these discipline strategiesinfluenced students’ academic performance differently depending on theacademic level of the student with the form two and four students registeringa decline and the form three students showing a slight improvement. The studyrecommends discipline strategies other than the three used in the study forgirls. Further research is required to determine the influence of these disciplinestrategies in other counties.