| dc.description.abstract | 21st century is an era of technological advancement, unpredictability and unfamiliar
demands. Consequently, it is vital that creativity remains at the heart of learning in
order to foster life-long skills such as idea generation, hypothesis making and testing,
problem solving and self-efficacy among others. These are sub-skills of the vital
competence, “creativity”. Reducing levels of creativity among learners seen for
example in their reduced levels of coming up with projects for science fairs and the
significance of creativity in successful living motivated the researcher to undertake a
study purposed to evaluate the influence of Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) on
creativity learning outcomes among grade four learners in Makueni County, Kenya.
Objectives of the study were to establish the: extent to which core competencies
nurtured in CBC influence creativity, relationship between teaching and learning
approaches in CBC and creativity, extent to which teacher induction into CBC
contributes to learners’ creativity and to examine the relationship between CBC
instructional materials and creativity learning outcomes. The study was informed by
constructivism and discovery learning theories. Mixed methods paradigm and
triangulation design were employed in the study. The target population for the study
was 38,905 individuals comprising 34,847 grade four pupils, 3,180 teachers, 832
Head teachers, 37 Curriculum Support Officers (CSOs) and 9 Quality Assurance and
Standards Officers(QASOs). Stratified random sampling was used to select 17
primary schools. The strata were the nine sub-counties constituting the County.
Krejcie and Morgan formula was used to determine sample size which was 380
respondents. The pupils, teachers, head teachers, CSOs and QASOs were 323, 31,
17, 6 and 3 respectively. Interview guide, questionnaire, observation schedule and
pupil creativity test were the data collection instruments. Interviews were for head
teachers, CSOs and QASOs. The questionnaire was for the teachers. Data was
collected from pupils using observation schedules and tests. Piloting of the research
instruments was done in three schools in the neighboring Machakos County. Validity
was established by supervisors and experts in the School of Education, Machakos
University. Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient was used to establish reliability for
quantitative data collecting instruments. It was 0.907 hence they were reliable.
Quantitative data was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS)
version 27 programme and presented in tables. Descriptive statistics used were:
frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation. The inferential statistic used
was regression. Qualitative data was analyzed thematically and presented in narrative
forms. The research established that, 74% of grade four pupils’ creativity can be
accounted for by CBC. The study concluded that, core competences, teaching and
learning approaches, teacher induction into CBC and CBC instructional materials
had statistically significant influence on pupil’s creativity learning outcomes and
should be reinforced to maximize their influence to learners’ creativity. The
recommendations were that the education stakeholders should ensure that: all the
core competencies are properly nurtured, follow-ups are done on teacher training in
CBC and motivate teachers to participate in the training, trainers are experienced and
do efficient training and schools have enough funds to acquire instructional
materials. | en_US |
