Abstract:
The study sought to determine the impact of teacher characteristics on performance in
secondary school science subjects in Eldoret Municipality in Kenya. Stratified random
sampling was used to draw a sample of 14 head teachers, 49 teachers and 289 form
three students. Stratification was based on the schools’ performance in KCSE science
subjects for the period 2001-2005 to obtain 7 low performing and 7 high performing
schools. The purpose of the study was to find out the influence of teacher factors of: age,
motivation, experience, competence, and methods of teaching on performance in
sciences. The study was significant as performance in science subjects has been poor for
a long time in Eldoret Municipality. Most students’ score below grade C- in science
hence do not proceed to do science–based careers. Data was collected using
questionnaires. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse and summarise the data. T-
test was used to test for significant differences between means of low performing and
high performing schools. Correlation was used to show relationships between
performance and the research variables. The findings showed that the impact of
competence and motivation of teacher as well as teaching method was significant but
other factors such as attitude, qualifications and experience of teacher were not
significant.
