The Role of Teaching Christian Religious Education to the Development of Critical Thinking Amongst Kenyan Secondary School Students in Kisumu East District, Kenya

Abstract

Previous research has consistently reported that Kenyan students’ moral standing and general conduct in the wider society reflects incompetence in critical thinking. The scenario in which irrational behavior has dominated the character of the Kenyan youth has brought to contention whether the moral well being of the youth is on a downward trend suggesting that either the teaching of critical thinking through C.R.E is defective or the Kenyan education system as a whole is defective. Another possibility is that the syllabus does not contain relevant elements that could enable students acquire and develop the needed critical thinking skills. One other likelihood could be the existence of a discrepancy between the C.R.E program objectives and the instructional practices meant to achieve them. From the forgoing, it was evident that the nature of this discrepancy is yet to be established for effective intervention strategies to be put in place to arrest the apparent downward trend in the acquisition of moral critical thinking skills. Specifically the study determined whether or not aspects of critical thinking skills are employed by teachers in their (teachers) instructional practices in Kisumu East district secondary schools. Four instruments used in collecting data included: a graphic-observation rating scale, a learners’ critical thinking achievement test, an in-depth interview schedule and documents analysis guide. The study population comprised 48 teachers and 3225 students. Out of the total population of 3273, 16 teachers and 343 learners were selected using simple random sampling technique. The obtained results suggested that teachers rarely used the elements of critical thinking skills that could enable the learner make accurate moral decisions. Another notable finding was that the curriculum and the syllabus guides did not elaborate on the elements of critical thinking skills that teachers ought to use during C.R.E content delivery.