Abstract
Education acts as an instrument of social reconstruction and therefore, it must be capable of stabilising social order and conserving culture in the society to ensure sustainability. Tutor beliefs about a curriculum for social changes and adaptability upon which social reconstruction orientation is premised is vital in developing knowledge, skills, attitudes and values in teacher trainees is much needed to adapt to the ever-changing global demands. This study sought to determine tutors’ preference on the choice of instructional approaches; to determine tutors’ level of social reconstruction orientation to the teacher education curriculum and to establish the relationship between tutors’ social reconstruction orientation and choice of instructional approaches in public primary teacher training colleges in Kenya. This study adopted a correlational approach with a convergent mixed-methods approach. Questionnaires, interviews, classroom observation and document analysis were used to collect data. The sample population involved 178 tutors, 35 HODs, 20 classrooms and 4 documents purposively selected from five public primary teacher training colleges in Kenya. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse data as per the study objectives. The study found no significant relationship between social reconstruction orientation and choice of instructional approaches. Consequently, this may impact negatively on the development of a teacher that is engaged, empowered, ethical and globally competitive as is proposed in the current teacher education reforms in Kenya. The inadequate representation, the restricted framework, limited provision of interactive learning activities and policy on the integration of societal issues in the primary teacher education curriculum provided a poor link between theory on societal issues and practice. Professional development of tutors and relevant stakeholder engagement are crucial in changing the mindsets of tutors with regard to teaching a curriculum for social reconstruction.
Highlights
Social reconstruction orientation looks upon the curriculum as a driving force to changes in society
The results indicate that tutors’ social reconstruction orientation to the curriculum was low in the areas of teaching ideas being drawn from emerging issues in the society (M = 2.2); allowing teacher trainees to carry out investigations, analysis and evaluation of problems in the society as part of their training (M = 2.5); allowing teacher trainees to identify their own choice of school practice so as to understand better societal issues (M = 2.6)
The study concludes that tutors’ social reconstruction orientation has no statistically significant relationship with the choice of instructional approaches used in public primary teachers’ training colleges in Kenya. This finding could be deduced to imply that tutors have their beliefs, assumptions or dispositions about the teaching of social issues in the curriculum which is not influenced by having such issues in the curriculum and due to their formed curriculum orientation the instructional approaches tend not to influence how they teach such issues
Summary
Social reconstruction orientation looks upon the curriculum as a driving force to changes in society. According to Sukri et al (2018), a social reconstruction curriculum should provide opportunities for collaborative interaction between learners and their peers, learners and the teachers, learners and their environment and other learning resources so as to develop socially adaptive behaviours and competencies that enable them to solve social problems. Such a curriculum is grounded on the understanding of issues that are pertinent and contemporary in the society as well as the social-cultural norms of a society
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