Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge on Drawing in the Acquisition of Communication Skills in Early Years Education in Kenya

Abstract

Studies globally and regionally indicate a low reading and communication attainment by children, with 90% of them in 3 rd world countries not attaining the average levels required. The majority across Africa struggle to read and communicate, which leads to meagre academic performance, Kenya is no exception to this trend. This scenario has been associated partly with challenges related to communication skills acquisition. Therefore, how teachers' aid learners to obtain the ability to converse is a question in this study. This study sought to explore Teachers' pedagogical content knowledge of drawing; The study was guided by Piaget’s Cognitive theory. The study adopted a pragmatic philosophical approach which allows for a mixed method research design. The study's population comprised of 6 ECDE sub-county EYE program officers, 1201 EYE schools and EYE teachers and 53,276 PP2 class learners in Nandi County. The study stratified Nandi County into six sub-counties and used Yamane formula to arrive at the sample of schools. 300 teachers, one per school was purposely sampled out and 15 teachers were selected through convenience sampling for the interviews. Non-Proportionate purposive sampling was used to pick the drawings from the pupils. A census of 6 EYE program officers was picked as respondents. The research instruments used in this study were questionnaires, interview schedules and document analysis. A mixed approach research design was used whereby quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics while qualitative data were analyzed using themes. The study found that there is a significant positive relationship between the teachers' pedagogical content knowledge on drawing and use in the acquisition of communication skills in Early years education (β1=0.206, p<0.05). This was supported by views of the teachers and program officers who were interviewed and documents analyzed. The study concluded that the majority of EYE teachers are not adequately prepared with content knowledge on drawing and that drawing is an effective tool in Early Years Education and teachers can utilize it to assist learners acquire their communication skills. Therefore, the study recommends refresher courses and further training, especially on the Early Years Education curriculum design, to improve the teachers' pedagogy in drawing.