Effect of reflective journal keeping on the performance of pre-school children in creative activities in kikuyu sub-County, Kenya

International Journal of Development Research

Volume: 
08
Article ID: 
13941
4 pages
Research Article

Effect of reflective journal keeping on the performance of pre-school children in creative activities in kikuyu sub-County, Kenya

Isabella Gathoni Muikia and Jane Ciumwari Gatumu

Abstract: 

There is a shift from the traditional support of education achievement in terms of excellence in knowledge for growing, thriving and surviving to creativity propelled learning. This raises the status of Creative Arts as a school subject for preschool children. Using a quasi-experimental design, out of 34 public preschools in Kikuyu Sub-County, Kenya, five were randomly selected to use in establishing the effect of pre-school teachers’ use of journal keeping as an element of reflective teaching on preschool children’s academic performance in Creative Arts. An intervention on how to keep and use journaling for teaching was given to the 13 preschool teachers in this sub-county. After the intervention, it was found that the mean score of pre-school children performance in creative activities whose teachers kept journals was significantly higher than the mean score of pre-school children whose teachers did not keep journals. The control group had a pretest mean score of 39.22 and a posttest means score of 47.95 while the experimental group had a pretest mean score of 26.22 and a posttest mean score of 74.19. The only different major thing done by the experimental group of teachers was that they keenly kept journals which allowed them to get concerned about their children as individuals to be attended to uniquely. It was recommended that journal keeping as an element of reflective teaching may be integrated in the daily classroom pedagogy to improve children performance in Creative Activities.

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