Abstract:
Kenya in the vision 2030 endeavor to expand her
development in infrastructure and industry; leading to
urbanization and middle level economy (Republic of Kenya,
2010). If the Kenyan government is to meet her goal by the year
2030 then she must expand her E
ducation in science and
technology by improving efficacy in curriculum implementation
in order to produce the required human resource. In contrast over
the years students’ performance in Physics at Kenya Certificate of
Secondary Education (KCSE) has been l
ow coupled with low
students’ enrollment. Little was known regarding influence of
scope and coverage of the syllabus on the implementation of the
curriculum for Physics. The purpose of this study was to determine
the influence of scope and coverage of the
syllabus on
implementation of the curriculum for Physics for secondary
schools. This study was guided by cognitive constructivism theory
of learning and adopted pragmatism research paradigm, mixed
method approach and triangulation design. This study targe
ted 224
teachers of Physics and 4140 Form three Physics students in 283
public a secondary schools in Bungoma County. Stratified and
simple random techniques were used to select 22 schools. The
Head of Subject (HOS) were purposively sampled from each
selected school. The sample size was 22 teachers and 393 students
making a total of 415 respondents. Data was collected between
September and October, 2017 using Teacher Questionnaire (TQ),
Student Questionnaire (SQ), Lesson Observation Schedule (LOS)
and Obse
rvation Checklists (OC). Data was presented using
frequency tables, figures and photographs and analyzed using both
descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics used to
analyze quantitative data include; percentages and means while
the in
ferential statistics used include; Chi
-square and Pearson
Product-
Moment correlation. Qualitative data was analyzed
thematically. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS)
version 20 was used to compute the analysis at α = 0.05 level of
significance.
Both quantitative and qualitative results showed that
a wide scope of the syllabus leads to failure to cover the syllabus
in time hence influenced the implementation of the curriculum for
Physics. The study concluded that the scope of the syllabus be
cover
ed in
-depth and timely. The study recommended that the
syllabus for Physics should be revised. The study findings provide
an opportunity for teachers to improve on their classroom
practices.