Influence of Teacher Related Factors on Academic Achievement of Secondary School Student Biology in Eldoret Municipality, Kenya

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2018 in the subject Pedagogy - The Teacher, Educational Leadership, , language: English, abstract: With the rapid developments in science and technology, biology, which is one of the fundamental to many disciplines has becomes increasingly important. The number of compounds and their many different applications begs the question, how can we teach all the knowledge to students? To meet with the needs of society, reform in biology teaching has taken place all over the world. However, we cannot teach students everything in this rapidly developing world. Accordingly, most academics agree that we should just teach students how to learn and apply biology. It is also the case that if people want to keep up with the development of knowledge, they should keep studying and assessing all their lives. However because the reformat has concentrated on knowledge structures, our teaching methods are still teacher-centered, not student-centered and do not encourage students to achieve lifelong learning and assessment.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between Teacher self-efficacy, interest, attitude, qualification, experience and pupils' academic achievement in secondary school biology. The participants of the study comprises of 254 secondary school teachers and 120 secondary school students. Data collected on the study were analyzed using a stepwise multiple regression analysis. The results reveals that teacher self-efficacy and interest had significant correlation with students achievement scores.

Teacher's self-efficacy being the best predictor of students' academic achievement in biology was followed by teacher's interest. Attitude, qualification and experience were not significant correlation with pupil's achievement in biology. The study recommended that it is high time for primary school biology teachers to have a change of attitude towards the teaching of the subject so that the achievement of universal basic education will not be hindered. Furthermore, primary school educational authorities were called upon to ensure that only teachers who are qualified to teach the subject are employed. Not these alone, their attention was also drawn to the fact that they should design educational programmes that will enhance the teacher self-efficacy for a better prediction of pupils' achievement in Biology.