correlation between teachers related factors and students’ academic achievement in public secondary schools in baringo county, kenya

Abstract

The significance of instructional leadership as it relates to students academic performance has assumed greater importance in education today as stakeholders demand for greater accountability. Teacher factors other than instructional leadership have been under scrutiny to determine their related influence of student academic performance. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between selected teacher factors and student achievement in public secondary schools in Baringo County. This study examined the relationship between four teacher factors namely; instructional leadership, qualification, experience and attitude towards teaching and students’ academic achievement. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design. The target population of the study was 1070 secondary school teachers from 122 public secondary schools. A sample size of 291 teachers was selected using stratified and simple random sampling techniques. The study used a teachers’ questionnaire and a document analysis form to collect data. The teachers questionnaire was examined for construct and face validity by a team of experts in Moi University. The comments of the experts were incorporated in the instruments before it was used in the field. The teachers questionnaire was also piloted for reliability and yielded an Alpha coefficient of 0.748. Data was analyzed with the aid of the Statistical Package for Social Science. Frequencies and percentages were used to summarize and describe data whereas the Multiple regression, Pearsons and Spearman correlations analysis were used to establish relationships. The results revealed that there was a significant relationship between students’ achievement and teachers’ instructional leadership (r=.165, p<.05), experience (r= .272, p<.05) and attitude towards teaching (r=.153, p<.05). However, the relationship (r=-.027, p.05), between students achievement and teachers qualification was not significant. The regression analysis revealed that teachers’ instructional leadership (ß= .208, p<.05), experience (ß = .281, p<.05) and attitude towards teaching (ß=.129, p<.05) contribute significantly towards variations in students achievement whereas teachers qualification (ß= -.023, p.05) does not. The analysis further revealed that the four explanatory variables explained 14.8% (R 2 = ,148) variation in students academic achievement. The findings will be important to the school management in establishing significant variables for articulating and adoption, researchers in identifying variables that create the greatest influence in improving student performances and policymakers in allocating resources in capacity building of school managers and the may assist administrators, researchers, and teachers.