Abstract:
There has been concern about the preparation of school teachers in pedagogy by
universities in Kenya, especially when learners post poor results in National
Examinations. This concern is what led to the design of the present study. The
purpose of this study was to determine the quality of preparing prospective school
teachers in pedagogy by Faculties/Schools of education in selected universities in
Kenya. The main objective of this study was to establish the factors that influence the
quality of preparing school teachers in pedagogy by Faculties/Schools of education.
Five other subsidiary objectives that guided this study were: to investigate the nature
and scope of teacher education in Kenyan universities; to investigate the present status
of pedagogical practices in Faculties/ Schools of Education in Kenyan universities; to
determine and establish the quality of teacher educators in Kenyan universities; to
establish the attitude of both students and lectures towards the duration taken to train
prospective school teachers and to investigate the facilities provided by university
management to Schools/Faculties of education in universities for preparing
prospective school teachers. The Theoretical framework used in this study was
shulman’s concept of pedagogical content knowledge, which emphasizes the
relationship between knowledge of content and pedagogical skills. The study was
anchored on the Pragmatic Philosophical paradigm. For this study, mixed research
method was employed and concurrent mixed method research design was used. The
target population was drawn from Kenyan universities offering Teacher Education
programmes, Deans, Heads/Chairs of Departments, lecturers of Pedagogy and
students pursuing education degree programmes in the Faculties/Schools of
Education. The Deans and Heads/Chairs of departments were purposively selected
while the students, lecturers and universities were selected by simple random method.
The selected universities were : Kenyatta university (Main Campus) and Egerton
university (Main Campus), drawn from public universities pool, while University of
Eastern Africa Baraton in Nandi County and Catholic University of Eastern Africa in
Nairobi were drawn from the private universities. The research instruments used in
this study included questionnaires, interview and observation schedules. These
instruments were concurrently administered to collect data. The researcher with the
help of two trained research assistants administered these instruments. The
quantitative data analysis was basically conducted using descriptive statistics to obtain
totals, means and percentages. Qualitative data was analyzed using content analysis.
The study revealed that the preparation of prospective school teachers by Faculties/
Schools of education is inadequate because of: inadequate time; inadequately
prepared teacher Trainers; inadequate Educational facilities and resources and
minimal support from university management to Faculties/ Schools of Education.
This study concluded that: school teachers prepared and produced by Kenyan
universities are not competent enough in pedagogy. In view of this conclusion the
study recommended that the duration of teacher preparation programme be extended
by one year; Teacher Trainers be trained in pedagogical skills and the universities
management should provide Faculties/School of Education with adequate educational
facilities/resources for preparation of prospective school teachers.