Influence of immediate preschool environment on curriculum implementation in public preschools in Mirangine district, Nyandarua county, Kenya.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate influence of immediate preschool enrollment on curriculum implementation in public preschools in Mirangine district, Nyandarua County. Three research questions were formulated to guide the study. These included investigation on parent’s role in preschool curriculum in Mirangine district Nyandarua County. The research also examined the preschool teacher’s role in the curriculum implementation. Further the research investigated the role of infrastructure in the curriculum implementation. The study methodology was survey design with a sample of twenty parents and twenty teachers respondents derived from a population of 1543 parents and 73 teachers, through cluster and simple random sampling technique. This gave every preschool teacher and parent equal opportunity of being selected. The study instruments were written questionnaires for teacher respondents, interview schedule for parent respondents and observational schedule for the infrastructure. The instruments were pilot tested to five parents and five teachers which were not used in the final study. The study established that many parents felt that financial support was the most important contribution in their children’s curriculum implementation. It was also established that “High cost” preschool parents motivated their children curriculum implementation more than “low cost “school parents. The curriculum further established that the major role of the preschool teacher was to enable the child socialize with peer. Sharing of teaching/learning resources enabled children to effectively socialize with his/her environment. The nature, quality and quantity of the preschool dictated among others teaching approach/methodology. Group activities were seen to be quite popular when classrooms had adequate space. Based on the findings it is recommended that the number of toilets in preschools be increased because young children are more frequent in toileting than older children and thus need of minimizing queuing period. The research further saw need of accompanying children to and from school. The study recommends a research be done on academic performance of pupils (in primary) who have undergone preschool education and those who have not. Further study should be done on influence of period (number of years) of preschooling on primary education.