The influence of Teachers' Preparation and Use of Professional Documents on Learners' Academic Performance in Public Primary Schools in Kasarani Sub-County, Nairobi County, Kenya

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between teachers' preparation and use of professional documents and learners' academic performance in public primary schools in Kasarani Sub-County, Nairobi County, Kenya. The specific research question was; what is the relationship between teachers' preparation and use of professional documents and learners' academic performance. The study was anchored on Adult Learning Theory and adopted a convergent parallel mixed-methods design, combining a cross-sectional survey with a descriptive phenomenological qualitative strand. From a target population of 26 head teachers, 130 teachers and 4,680 Grade 5 and 6 learners drawn from the 26 public primary schools in Kasarani Sub-County, a sample of 10 schools, 10 head teachers, 50 teachers and 369 learners (429 participants in total) was drawn using a combination of simple random, purposive and Yamane-formula stratified random sampling. Quantitative data were collected using a Likert-scaled teachers' questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation and multiple regression in SPSS version 25; qualitative data were collected through focus group discussions with learners and in-depth interviews with head teachers, and analyzed thematically. Descriptively, teachers reported strongly positive perceptions of professional documentation (mean = 4.33, SD = 0.567), with universal agreement that lesson plans and schemes of work are prepared and used to organize instruction, although consistency of reference to these documents during actual lesson delivery was comparatively lower. Inferentially, teachers' preparation and use of professional documents had an extremely strong, positive and statistically significant bivariate relationship with learners' academic performance (r = 0.968, p = 0.000), and, in linear regression model demonstrated strongest positive predictor of academic performance (β = 0.569, p = 0.008), with the overall model explaining 96.7 percent of the variance in academic performance (R = 0.983, R² = 0.967, F(4, 45) = 330.602, p = 0.000). Findings from head teachers and learners corroborated the quantitative results, highlighting systematic lesson preparation, classroom organization, progress monitoring and institutional (leadership) support as the mechanisms linking documentation practice to performance. The study concludes that teachers' preparation and use of professional documents is the strongest single correlate of learners' academic performance among the TCPD dimensions studied, and recommends that head teachers strengthen instructional supervision of lesson plans, schemes of work and learner-progress records, and that this be reinforced through mentoring, subject panels and CPD committees at school level.