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Author: search.filters.author.Mwenje, Margaret

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    Assessment of Decision Making Skills among Adolescents from Rural and Urban Contexts in Kenya: A Comparative Study of Learners in Public Secondary Schools in Nyeri and Nairobi Counties
    (African Journal of Education, Science and Technology, 2018) Perminus, Githui; Njoka, N. Johannes; Mwenje, Margaret
    Human beings are confronted by situations that require them to make decisions every day in their lives. The natural processes of adjustment to situations in life that human beings are part of demands acts of decision making. Decision making is hence a natural consequence of existence by human beings. The purpose of this study was to assess the decision making skills among adolescents from rural contexts and those from urban environments. The study was guided by the following objectives which was to; assess the status of decision making skills among adolescents from rural and urban contexts in Kenya, evaluate the variables that influence adolescents during decision making processes from rural and urban environments in Kenya and analyze the challenges that face adolescents while making decisions from rural and urban contexts in Kenya. Descriptive research design was used in this study. Social cognitive theory developed by Bandura guided the study. The target population comprised of adolescents selected from schools from Nyeri and Nairobi Counties. A sample of schools from the two counties was selected using Kothari’s sampling formula which gave 30 (10%) schools from both counties. The sampled schools were as follows; 2 boys’ schools from each county, 3 and 2 girls’, 4 and 17 co-educational schools from Nyeri and Nairobi Counties respectively. Data was collected using a questionnaire administered to the sampled adolescents. The study used a sampling formula by Kathuri and Pals to determine the sample size which yielded 391 respondents. Analyzed data revealed that adolescents from urban areas had relatively better decision making skills compared to their counterparts from rural environments. The first hypothesis stated that there was no statistically significant difference in decision making abilities among adolescents from rural and urban contexts. To test this hypothesis, t-test was calculated which gave a level of significance .000 which was less than the pvalue (.05). Therefore the null hypothesis was rejected. It was concluded that the decision making skills among adolescents from rural and urban contexts was dissimilar. The second research hypothesis sought to establish whether there was any statistically significant difference in decision making skills between gender from rural and urban contexts. The results of data analysis presented revealed that the level of significance .163 was more than the p-value (.05). Therefore the null hypothesis was accepted. It was concluded that there was no statistically significant difference in decision making skills among male and female adolescents. The study recommended that there is need to strengthen the process of nurturing decision making skills among adolescents in secondary schools in Kenya.
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    Evaluation of Creative Thinking Skills amongst Students in Kenya: A Case Study of Public Secondary Schools in Nyeri and Nairobi Counties.
    (African Journal of Education, Science and Technology, 2018-06) Githui, Perminus; Njoka, Johannes Njagi; Mwenje, Margaret
    Creative thinking skills are vital competencies in the life of every individual. Therefore, people with creative thinking skills are able to innovate and come up with novel solutions to problems that confront them in life. In this way, they become innovators and problem solvers. Creative thinking is competences that enable learners to apply their imagination in generating ideas, hypotheses, and experiment with alternatives to generate new products and processes. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the creative thinking skills among students in boys’, girls’ and co-education public secondary schools (PSC) in Nyeri and Nairobi Counties. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design guided by the social cognitive theory as its theoretical framework. The target population consisted of 69,220 learners in 300 PSC in Nairobi and Nyeri Counties. The schools in the two counties were stratified into boys, girls and mixed-sex schools. Therefore, 4 boys’, 5 girls’ and 21 co-education secondary schools were selected to form a sample of ten percent of the schools from each stratum. Data was collected using a questionnaire administered to the sampled students. A total of 391 respondents were sampled in both counties. Analyzed data indicated that the students in Nairobi County had moderately higher creative thinking skills than their fellow students from Nyeri. The computed mean score for students’ creative thinking skills per county were; Nairobi ( 3.06) and Nyeri with ( 3.03). Independent Sample t-test of creative thinking skills of learners in both gave a pvalue 0.584 which was above 0.05 significance level, this indicated that there was no significant difference in creative thinking among students in Nairobi and Nyeri Counties. Additionally, the study sought to find out the creative thinking skills among learners in single sex and co-education public secondary schools in the two counties. Data analysis revealed that girls schools posted the highest level of creative thinking abilities ( = 3.08), followed by boys schools ( =3.07) while mixed-sex secondary schools had a mean score of 3.01. The computed ANOVA for boys, girls and mixed- sex secondary schools, yielded a p values of 0.478 which was above 0.05 significance level, indicating that there was no significant difference in creative thinking skills among students in single sex and coeducation secondary schools at 95% limit. Therefore the null hypothesis was accepted and concluded that the creative thinking abilities among students in the three categories of schools were relatively the same. The study concluded that there is need to strengthen creative thinking skills among learners in the three school categories in both counties in Kenya.
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