Teacher Characteristics Influencing Their Management of Pre- Primary School Pupils’ Disruptive Behaviour in Embakasi Constituency Nairobi City County, Kenya

Abstract

The study’s purpose was to investigate teachers’ characteristics that impact their management of disruptive behaviour among preschool pupils in Embakasi South, Nairobi City County. Disruptive behaviours are uncontrolled patterns of hostile defiant behaviours towards any type of authority, and they include defiance of teacher requests, hitting, kicking, fighting, bullying, name-calling, and interruption of class to draw attention. The study's objectives were to determine the impact of instructors' educational levels on the management of disruptive behaviour by pupils in preschool in Embakasi educational establishments.; to investigate how teachers’ gender influence their management of  preschool pupils disruptive behaviour  in Embakasi ; to assess the influence of teachers age on the management of preschool pupils disruptive behaviour  in Embakasi and to determine the influence of teachers experience on management of  preschool pupils disruptive behaviour  in Embakasi. The theory guiding the study is the theory of planned behaviour by Icek Ajzen. Through simple random sampling, the researcher selected 25 schools out of the 245 schools in the target population. The two instruments that were employed for data collection in the study were questionnaires for teachers and observation schedules to monitor how teachers manage children's’ disruptive behaviour in the classroom. A pilot study was conducted in 3 schools which were not included in the final study. The researcher evaluated the piloted instruments for consistency of responses to make a judgement on their reliability. The reliability of the questionnaire was established using Internal Consistency. Permission from Kenyatta University and The National Commission for Science Technology and Innovation was sought. Data were entered into the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (v22), and descriptive statistics was utilized for data summarization. The results were presented using descriptive statistics such as mean, median, standard deviation and variance. Inferential statistics that is regression analysis was used to analyse quantitative data. The findings were that teacher characteristics have an impact on classroom management. Teachers with many years of experience were found to be more competent in handling disruptive behaviour than novice teachers. Teachers with high educational qualifications were found to adapt easily to recommended methods of discipline than non-qualified teachers. Age had less effect on classroom management, but older teachers were better than younger teachers in handling disruptive behaviours. Gender had less effect on classroom management. The study recommends that school administrations should organise seminars or workshops to train teachers on how to handle children with disruptive behaviours in the classrooms. In addition, County government should organize post training workshops and seminars to train teachers on classroom management. In conclusion schools should employ qualified teachers who adapt easily to recommended methods of classroom management

Keywords: Disruptive behaviour, Teacher characteristics, Preschool, Classroom management, Instructor

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/15-11-13

Publication date: October 30th 2024