An investigation of teacher modeling’s effect on pedagogical competence in public secondary school in Kenya

Teaching strategies of the 21st century worldwide are ever-changing and need constant upgrading through teacher mentorship practices (TMP) that enhance their pedagogical competence. The purpose of the study was to examine the effect of teacher modeling on pedagogical competence in public secondary schools in Kenya. The study adopted mixed methods research design, grounded in pragmatism research paradigm. The target population was 105,234 teachers including Principals from 8,933 public secondary schools in 47 counties in Kenya. Using the Krejcie and Morgan table (1970) a sample size of 384 was determined with a slight oversampling of 56 to 440 respondents. Teachers in national schools were preferred. Simple random sampling was used to get 36 counties from which 2 national schools were purposively sampled bringing the total number to 72 national schools. Principals from these schools were included in the study. Through purposive sampling 184 teacher mentors who were heads of departments were included in the study while 184 novice/teacher mentees were identified through simple random sampling. The data was collected using Focused Group discussion (FGD) and questionnaires. Qualitative data was analyzed using themes while quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics namely frequencies, mean and standard deviations as well as inferential statistics namely Pearson correlation, ANOVA and simple linear regression analysis. The findings revealed that, teacher modeling has statistically significant effect on pedagogical competence in public secondary schools in Kenya (t= 9.328 (B=0.000) p<.0001). The study concludes that teacher modeling emerges as a multifaceted approach to professional development (PD), offering novice/mentee teachers a blueprint for pedagogical excellence across various dimensions. It recommends that for the purpose of teacher mentorship in public secondary, schools administrators should make teacher modeling a priority to foster their pedagogical competencies.