Relationship between instructional resources and teacher effectiveness in early years education centres in Siaya county, Kenya

Abstract

Teacher effectiveness is a predictor of education quality. Research has established that teachers’ interaction with instructional resources and the environment contributes immensely to their effectiveness in the learning process especially in early years’ education. Despite this fact, early years learning indicators show that learners are not getting much in terms of learning. Recent surveys in Kenya show a third (33%) of early years learners lack basic competencies. In Siaya County, concerns have been raised on the fact that learners joining grade one lack basic competencies indicating they were poorly or not acquired during their early years’ education, hence impeding their learning and future development. Early years learning outcomeplaces it 23% below her neighboring counties. This study therefore, purposed to establish the relationship between instructional resources and teacher effectiveness. Objectives were to ; assess relationship between availability of instructional resourcesand teacher effectiveness, establish relationshipbetween adequacyand instructional resources, examine relationshipbetween relevance of instructional resourcesand teacher effectiveness, investigate relationship between frequency of use of instructional resourcesand teacher effectiveness andestablishrelationshipbetweenattitude towards instructional resources and teacher effectiveness. The study is conceptualized on the effect of the interaction between Independent Variable (Instructional resources elements) and Dependent Variable (Teacher effectiveness). Correlational and descriptive survey designs were adopted; target population was 1926 Teachers, 628 Center Managers and 1 Early Years Education County Director. Krejcie and Morgan (1970) sample size estimation table was used to select 320 teachers. Systematic randomsamplingand purposive sampling techniques was used to select Teachers, Center Managers and county pre-primary education director respectively. Data collection instruments wereClassroom Observation Guide (COG), Teacher Questionnaire (TQ) and two interview schedules.Reliability was established by piloting 10% of the population using test-retest method. Chronbach’s alpha was used to determine instruments’ reliability with COG andTQ coefficientsbeing 0.833 and0.797 respectively thus considered reliable. Faceand content validity were ascertained by experts. Analysis was done through descriptive and inferential statistics. These were by means, standard deviations and multiple regressions. Findings indicated that level of availability,level of relevance and teacher attitude towards instructional resources had significant relationships at (r=0.115;p-value=0.041<0.05), (r=0.215, p-value=0.0005<0.05) and (r=0.215, p-value=0.005>0.05) respectively while level of adequacy, frequency of use of instructional resources were not significant at (r=-0.038, p-value=0.497>0.05),(r=0.06, p-value=0.287>0.05) respectively with regard to teacher effectiveness. The study concludes that instructional resources were not available, inadequate, irrelevant, not frequently used and teachers had neutral attitude towards instructional resources. However, level of availability, level of relevance and attitude have statistically significant relationships with teacher effectiveness while level of adequacy and frequency of use of instructional resources were not statistically significant. This means that provision of instructional resources should focus more on level of availability, level of relevance and teacher attitude. These findings may be useful to center managers, teachers and curriculum developers in making informed decision with regard to the provision and utilization of instructional resources in early years’ education.