ASSESSMENT OF 21ST CENTURY TEACHING PROFESSION SKILLS EMPHASIS IN UNIVERSITY PRE-SERVICE TEACHER TRAINING PROGRAMMES IN KENYA: A CASE STUDY OF BOMET UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

Abstract

In this era of a global economy, education systems are changing to rethink the teaching-learning process in order to prepare better individuals to be able to meet the changing social and economic demands. It is against this backdrop that in 2019 Kenya adopted the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) in an effort to reform her education system and make it globally competitive with regard to human resource development. The new curriculum is being implemented within a 2-6-6-3 system of education framework as the old 8-4-4 system is gradually phased out. The CBC implementation is currently from Pre-primary 1 to Grade 7. CBC aims to equip school graduates with the requisite 21^st century competences of communication and collaboration, critical thinking and problem-solving, creativity and imagination, and citizenship, digital literacy, among others. The success of the CBC is anchored on the transformational role to be played by the teacher which goes beyond a technical transmission activity to include competences and attitude development, talent identification and nurturing, career guidance, and even activism committed to diminishing the inequities of society. The bulk of the country’s teaching force will henceforth be concentrated in secondary schools as opposed to primary schools. Ideally, secondary school teachers would have had university-level education. These developments call for paradigm shifts in the way universities prepare teachers to be responsive to the changed role of the teacher. Of critical importance is the restructuring of the university teacher education programmes to ensure that they adequately address the challenges of the 21^st century classroom, hence aligning them to the demands of CBC. The objective of this study therefore was to assess the level of emphasis accorded to skills of the 21^st century teaching profession in university pre-service teacher training programmes in Kenya. Stufflebeam’s (1983) CIPP Evaluation Model was used to give focus to the study. Descriptive survey and case study research designs were used in the study. The study was carried out at Bomet University College (BUC) and the study population comprised 1 Teaching Practice Assessment Criteria (TPAC) used to assess students on teaching practice in the 7 undergraduate and 1 postgraduate pre-service teacher training programmes at BUC. A saturated sampling technique was used to select 1 TPAC which formed the sample of the study. A document analysis guide was used to collect data whereby the TPAC was analyzed for content related to skills of the 21^st century teaching profession. A numerical rating scale was used to gather information relating to 22 skills of the 21^st century teaching profession. Each skill was rated against a 5-point scale to ascertain the degree of emphasis it was accorded in the curriculum. Mean scores were computed for each category of skills and used to report the findings. The study found an overall average emphasis (M = 2.95) on the skills of the 21^st century teaching profession by university pre-service teacher training programmes in Kenya. It was concluded that pre-service teacher training programmes in Kenya did not adequately emphasize skills of 21^st century teaching profession hence producing graduates who were ill-equipped with the requisite competences. The study recommended that universities in Kenya should review their teacher education programmes to align them with the demands of 21^st century skills of the teaching profession and the CBC.

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