Abstract:
Gender equality is a recurring theme in international conventions on education and
social development. Relatively, little information exists regarding gender differences
among teachers and their strategies to scaffold Socio-Emotional Competence (SEC) in
preschool children. The information available has so far provided a mixed picture with
some studies mainly focusing on the influence of teachers’ gender on children’s
achievement. Some of these studies show that women have greater influence on
children’s achievement, while others find no significant differences. This mixed methods
study provides supplementary evidence on the influence of teachers’ gender on
children’s achievement, but specifically, on SEC which is non-cognitive. From a total of
98 public and private preschools in Eldoret town, purposive sampling was used to select
301 preschool teachers out of which 6 participated in an interview while 2 classrooms
were placed under observation. From these data, despite women being nurturers, there
was no statistical significant influence of gender on strategies used by preschool
teachers to scaffold SEC in children. Both men and women used the same strategies to
scaffold SEC in children and this has been explored in detail. Efforts should be made to
encourage preschool teachers regardless of their gender to intentionally scaffold SEC
in children.
