Effectiveness of the Preventive Strategy Used by Heads of Schools in Improving Students Discipline in Public Secondary Schools in Moshi Municipality, Tanzania

Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of the preventive strategy used by heads of schools in improving students discipline in public secondary schools in Moshi Municipality, Tanzania. Assertive Discipline Theory developed by Canter and Canter in 1979 guided the study. The study was guided by one research question aiming to find out the extent to which preventive strategy was effectively used to improve students’ discipline in public secondary schools in Moshi Municipality. The study employed a convergent research design under mixed method research. The target population of the study included 14 public secondary schools, 14 heads of public secondary schools, 28 discipline teachers, 12300 students and 168 class teachers in Moshi Municipality. Stratified sampling and simple random sampling techniques were used to select 5 schools, 40 class teachers and 200 students who were involved in the study while 5 heads of sampled schools and 10 discipline teachers of sampled schools were not sampled but directly included in the study to make total number of 255 respondents. Questionnaires, interview guide and document analysis guide were used to collect data from the respondents. The reliability of quantitative data was established through Cronbach Alpha; (r=0.76 for discipline teachers’ questionnaire, r=0.86 for class teachers and r=0.66 for students’ questionnaire) while the reliability for the qualitative data was established through member checking and triangulation of data. The Quantitative data was analyzed by using questionnaires and presented by using frequencies, percentages, means and tables. Qualitative data was analyzed in words and developing themes from the research questions and presented in narrative form and direct quotations. The study found out that school rules and regulations, good communication between teachers, parents, students, and rollcalls were effectively used in improving students’ discipline. The study recommended that heads of secondary schools to provide school rules and regulations to students every year and improve communication between students, teachers and parents and encourage teachers to use effectively attendance registers to track indiscipline students in order to improve students’ discipline.