Students' involvement in decision making and its influence on discipline in public secondary schools Murang'a South District, Kenya

Abstract

This study set out to investigate students' involvement in decision making and its influence on discipline in public secondary schools Murang'a South district. The study sought to identify various forms of secondary school head teachers involvement in decision making; to explore the extent to which secondary school head teachers involve students in decision making; to determine the extent to which students' participation in decision making processes influences their discipline and to establish barriers to student involvement in decision making in secondary schools.

Participatory administration is a concept of behavioral science movement theory which acknowledges that school administration should uphold other members of the school organization as a unit important in all decision making processes. The study used survey research, where 90(20 percent) teachers 100(20 percent) prefects and 7(20 percent) deputy head teachers were sampled using both stratified and purposive sampling. Questionnaires were used as the method of data collection and piloting done in two schools to ensure reliability of the instruments.

The study established that secondary school students were involved in decision making such as in areas of leadership where they participate in selecting their prefects and in deciding individual subjects. The study also revealed that 20 (60 percent) of the schools that involved student in decision making experienced low indiscipline cases compared to 13 school (40 percent) that did not involve them. Barriers of student involvement in decision making included teachers' negative attitude on student making meaningful decisions, age difference between teachers and students and administrators ignorance on emerging issues.

The study recommends that schools which do not involve student in decision making should formulate strategies that involve them especially in other areas apart from selection of prefects and choosing of individual subjects. School administrators should also embrace emerging issues as they occur in the society so as to minimize conflicts between them and the students. Other researches recommended by the study are factors hindering effective involvement of students in secondary school administration and this same study done in large administrative area using a larger sample of respondents.