TEACHERS’ PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE: A CASE STUDY OF COAST GIRLS SECONDARY SCHOOL IN MOMBASA COUNTY, KENYA

Authors

  • Thuo, D.N.

Keywords:

Teaching experience, Content knowledge, Teaching skills, In-service training

Abstract

The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) and Ministry of Education have been advocating for teachers’ professional development for the purpose of improving students’ academic performance. However, there is still no conclusive studies that show how teachers’ professional development impact on students’ academic performance. The research study therefore was designed to investigate whether there is a relationship between teachers’ professional development and students’ academic performance at Coast Girls Secondary School in Mombasa County, Kenya. The study employed ex-post facto research design. The target population was 852 respondents in Coast Girls Secondary schools in Mombasa County, Kenya. A purposive sampling method was used to choose the participants. The sample comprised of 116 Form 4 Biology students and 4 Biology teachers. The biology performance in 2017 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Examination was used as a measure of students’ academic performance. The descriptive statistics used were mean and standard deviation to compare students’ academic performance among the classes taught by the 4 teachers. ANOVA test statistics was used to test the hypotheses in the study, while Post-hoc Tukey’s HSD test was performed to show where the significance differences existed among the independent variables. The hypotheses testing was done at α = 0.05 level of significance. The data collected in this study was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) computer programme version 20.0. The research findings established that there was a relationship between teachers’ professional development and students’ academic performance. It was therefore recommended that teachers should be encouraged to continue with professional development in order to improve students’ academic performance. However, it was also noted that students’ academic performance was low despite their teachers’ professional development and therefore there is need for further research to investigate why students’ academic performance remain low despite high level of teachers’ professional development.

Downloads

Published

2023-06-06