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Level of Male Teacher Representation in Early Childhood Development and Education Centres in Matete Sub-County, Kakamega County, Kenya
Subject area: Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities · Area of research: Educational Psychology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.64388/IREV10I1-1720178
Abstract
Early Childhood Development and Education is the stage at which children acquire cognitive skills, learning habits and pro-social behaviour largely through observation and imitation of their teachers, which makes the composition of the teaching workforce a matter of pedagogical rather than merely administrative interest. That workforce is overwhelmingly female in Kenya as elsewhere, yet the extent of male underrepresentation at sub-county level, and the form it takes, has rarely been measured directly. This paper reports the first objective of a larger study and determines the level of male teacher representation in Early Childhood Development and Education centres in Matete Sub-County, Kakamega County, Kenya. A comparative research design with a causal-comparative approach was adopted within a mixed methods framework. From a target population of 1,014, a sample of 285 was determined using the Krejcie and Morgan table. Questionnaires were administered to teachers and semi-structured interviews were conducted with head teachers, Curriculum Support Officers and the Sub-County Programme Officer, supported by observation schedules and document analysis. The teacher response rate was 94.1 percent and the overall response rate 96.1 percent. Male teachers constituted 10.2 percent of the 177 responding teachers, against 89.8 percent female. At centre level the imbalance was sharper still: only 14 of 76 centres, or 18.4 percent, had at least one male teacher, while 62 centres, or 81.6 percent, had none. Interview data identified three features of the pattern: an absolute shortage of male teachers, the concentration of that shortage such that most centres have none at all, and the deployment of many of the few available men into administrative rather than classroom roles. The study concludes that underrepresentation is better described as near-absence, and that its uneven distribution means most learners in the sub-county have no exposure to a male teacher at any point during their early years.
Keywords
Early Childhood Development and Education, Gender Representation, Male Teachers, Teacher Deployment, Workforce Feminisation.
How to cite this paper
@article{1720178,
author = {Sifuna Stephen Watamba, Florence Wanjala, Robert Wafula},
title = {Level of Male Teacher Representation in Early Childhood Development and Education Centres in Matete Sub-County, Kakamega County, Kenya},
journal = {Iconic Research And Engineering Journals},
year = {2026},
volume = {10},
number = {1},
pages = {3275-3284},
issn = {2456-8880},
url = {https://www.irejournals.com/formatedpaper/1720178.pdf},
abstract = {Early Childhood Development and Education is the stage at which children acquire cognitive skills, learning habits and pro-social behaviour largely through observation and imitation of their teachers, which makes the composition of the teaching workforce a matter of pedagogical rather than merely administrative interest. That workforce is overwhelmingly female in Kenya as elsewhere, yet the extent of male underrepresentation at sub-county level, and the form it takes, has rarely been measured directly. This paper reports the first objective of a larger study and determines the level of male teacher representation in Early Childhood Development and Education centres in Matete Sub-County, Kakamega County, Kenya. A comparative research design with a causal-comparative approach was adopted within a mixed methods framework. From a target population of 1,014, a sample of 285 was determined using the Krejcie and Morgan table. Questionnaires were administered to teachers and semi-structured interviews were conducted with head teachers, Curriculum Support Officers and the Sub-County Programme Officer, supported by observation schedules and document analysis. The teacher response rate was 94.1 percent and the overall response rate 96.1 percent. Male teachers constituted 10.2 percent of the 177 responding teachers, against 89.8 percent female. At centre level the imbalance was sharper still: only 14 of 76 centres, or 18.4 percent, had at least one male teacher, while 62 centres, or 81.6 percent, had none. Interview data identified three features of the pattern: an absolute shortage of male teachers, the concentration of that shortage such that most centres have none at all, and the deployment of many of the few available men into administrative rather than classroom roles. The study concludes that underrepresentation is better described as near-absence, and that its uneven distribution means most learners in the sub-county have no exposure to a male teacher at any point during their early years.},
keywords = {Early Childhood Development and Education, Gender Representation, Male Teachers, Teacher Deployment, Workforce Feminisation.},
month = {July},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.64388/IREV10I1-1720178}
}