Abstract
Students’ discipline is a major concern to many stakeholders globally. However, despite
commitment of the government of Kenya to uphold both
internation
al and local trends of
recognizing the rights of the child, the management of students’ discipline by use of
alternative disciplinary methods in schools still remains largely unexplored.
This study
sought to investigate the effects of principals’ alternati
ve disciplinary methods on students’
discipline in public secondary schools in Kitui County, Kenya. The study objectives sought
to establish the effect of principals’ use of peer counselling; suspension of indiscipline
students; students’ expulsion and use
of class meetings with students for collaborative
decision making on students’ discipline. The study was based on the
Systems theory
. Ex
post facto research design was adopted. The target population for the study was 333 public
secondary schools consistin
g of
333
Principals,
333
Deputy principals
,1665
HoDs Guidance
and Counselling, Board of Management (BoM) chairpersons, the County Director of
Education and Kitui law courts Resident Magistrate. The sample
size was
obtained by
stratified proportionate samp
ling procedure, purposive sampling and simple random
sampling. The study sample size consisted of 101 public secondary schools consisting of
Principals, Deputy Principals, HoDs Guidance and Counselling, 15 Board of Management
members, Kitui County Directo
r of Education and Kitui Law Courts Resident Magistrate.
Purposive sampling was used to select some schools,
HoDs guidance and Counselling,
Kitui
County Director of Education and Kitui Law Courts Resident Magistrate
because of their
number and because the
y had useful information in relation to this study
.
The total
respondents for the study were 320. A test
-
re
-
test technique was used to test reliability. Data
collection tools included questionnaires and interview guides. Data was analysed using
SPSS. Descr
iptive statistics was used to analyze, tabulate and present data. Results of data
gathered from closed ended and open ended items were reported in frequency tables, cross
tabulation tables and explanation of the findings were made based on themes. The Chi
-
square(
x
2
) test was used to determine the strength of association between alternative
disciplinary methods and students’ discipline and to test whether the observed relationship is
significant or not. The significance level was set at alpha = 0.05. The st
udy established that
peer counselling had the highest p
-
value 0.518. Students’ expulsion was rated second with
p
-
value 0.491. Holding class meetings with students for collaborative decision making was
rated third with a p
-
value 0.373 while suspension of in
discipline students was rated fourth
with a p
-
value 0.351. It was concluded that principals’ use of alternative
disciplinary
methods had no significant
effect on
students’ discipline. However, the study has revealed
that Peer counselling has the stronges
t association with students discipline with a p
-
value
0.518 whereas suspension has the weakest relationship with students’ discipline with p
-
value of 0.351. The study recommend
s:
review of disciplinary methods in schools and
provision of policy guidelines
on the best alternative disciplinary methods; strengthe
ning
the
use of
alternative disciplinary methods in management of students’ discipline. The study
suggested a comparative study on perception of teachers and parents on corporal
punishment and alternat
ive disciplinary methods in the management of students’ discipline.
This study could be significant in that it could
provide an insight on the best practices and
choices of appropriate alternative disciplinary methods to be used on students’ discipline in
schools.
