Secondary School Students’ Mastery of Integrated Science Process Skills in Siaya County, Kenya

The study investigated secondary school students’ mastery of Integrated Science Process Skills (ISPS) among co-educational schools and the influence of grade level, gender, and school location in Siaya County, Kenya. The study used a causal-comparative design with purposive sampling technique. A 30-item Test of Integrated Science Process Skill (TISPS) developed by Kazeni (2005) was administered. The instrument assesses the skills of controlling variables, defining operationally, formulating hypotheses, experimenting and interpreting data. The instrument was administered to 429 students, 117, 108, 101 and 103 in grades 9, 10, 11 and 12 respectively drawn from one urban co-educational school (n = 215) and one rural co-educational school (n = 214). The data were analyzed by grade level using one-way ANOVA and by gender and school location using an independent sample t-test. The findings indicated moderate mastery of ISPS and statistically significant grade level differences between grades 9 and 10, 10 and 11, 11 and 12, 9 and 11, 9 and 12, and 10 and 12; Gender differences in favor of boys and school location differences in favor of urban school students in mastery of ISPS. The following conclusions are made with regard to integrated science process skills: Mastery of ISPS increases with grade level; boys have a higher mastery of ISPS than girls; the urban school has a higher mastery of ISPS than the rural school. Implications for practice and further research are herein explicated

Secondary School Teachers’ Perceptions of a Biology Constructivist Learning Environment in Gem District, Kenya

This study investigated the teachers’ perceptions of actual and preferred constructivist biology learning environment. The study adopted a survey design. Data were collected from a sample of 41 biology teachers from Gem District, Kenya using a 20-item Teacher Perception Questionnaire (TPQ) which is a modified version of Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (CLES), the teachers’ version. The TPQ consisted of two forms which are “Actual” and “Preferred”. While the actual form assessed the current biology learning environment, the preferred form assessed the teacher perception of a constructivist learning environment. The data were analyzed using paired t-test. The results showed that the teachers’ scores on the preferred form of some scales (Personal relevance, uncertainty and student negotiation) were significantly different from the actual form (p< 0.05). On the other hand the teachers’ scores for scales of critical voice and shared control scales of actual and preferred forms of TPQ were not statistically significant (p< 0.05). The implications of the study for practice and further research are discussed

Perception of Constructivist Learning Environment: Gender and School Type Differences in Siaya County, Kenya

Aims: The study aimed at investigating gender and school type differences in perception of Biology constructivist learning environment. Study Design: The study adopted a survey design. Place and Duration of Study: The study was carried out in Siaya County in Kenya between October and November 2013 during the school term. Methodology: The study sampled 815 grade 12 students (466 boys, 349 girls, 399 high achieving students and 416 low achieving students). Two instruments were used viz. Learners Perception Questionnaire (LPQ) and Learners Interview Guide (LIG). The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, independent sample t-tests, two-way MANOVA and two-way ANOVA. The qualitative data were used to explain quantitative data. Results: The findings show that there existed statistically significant difference in perception between the low achieving schools and high achieving schools in favor of the low achieving schools in all the subscales of SPQ (p =.00) and statistically significant gender (Hotelling’s trace = .131, F = 21.19, p = .000) and school type (Hotelling’s trace = .269, F = 43.48, p = .000) differences with respect to the collective dimensions of the SPQ. The results also revealed that there was an interaction between gender and school type and vice versa with respect to collective dimensions of the SPQ (Hotelling’s trace = .176, F = 23.40, p = .000). Conclusion: It is concluded that low achieving schools have higher preference for a constructivist learning environment than high achieving schools and there exists gender and school type differences in perception of constructivist learning environment in favor of girls and low achieving schools respectively. The implications of the findings are discussed

The Role of Teacher Regulatory Talk in Students’ Self-Regulation Development Across Cultures

This study is the first to explore the contribution of different types of teacher regulatory talk—directive, guiding, and autonomy supportive talk—in children's development of self‐regulation across cultures. Teacher‐to‐student talk was analyzed under naturalistic conditions in eight Year 4 classrooms, all situated in different primary schools in England (student N = 25) and Chile (N = 24). Self‐regulation was studied by observing students’ effective metacognitive monitoring (awareness of errors) and effective metacognitive control (effective control of problems) in a series of 11–13 cube assembly tasks. Mann–Whitney U tests showed that English participants demonstrated higher levels of effective metacognitive monitoring and control, and participating teachers a similar level of teacher regulatory talk across cultures. The function that regulatory talk had in predicting students’ self‐regulation, however, tended to vary according to culture. OLS multiple regressions revealed that while guiding talk had the same positive effect across cultures, directive talk had a negative effect in England but null effect in Chile, and autonomy supportive talk had a positive effect in Chile but negative in England. These results indicate that it would be valuable to explore further the culturally adaptive functionality of teacher talk for students’ self‐regulation development