Abstract:
This paper is a report of a study that was carried out in year 2017 on the perceptions of teacher trainers and trainees on the relevance of instructional resources for Creative Arts teacher education curriculum to learners’ needs in Kenya. The larger study from which this paper was drawn was on the perceptions of teacher trainers and trainees on the relevance of Creative Arts teacher education curriculum to learners’ and societal needs. This study was guided by Structural Functionalism Theory. The pragmatic paradigm was adopted in the study. The study used mixed methods research approach. These involved integrating the qualitative and quantitative approaches. Under this design both the qualitative and quantitative data were collected concurrently, analyzed separately and then merged for interpretation of overall results. This study targeted teacher trainees, trainers and HoDs of Creative Arts drawn from public primary teacher training colleges in the western region of Kenya. Stratified and simple random sampling methods were used to select the sample whereby three hundred and ten participants were selected for the study. These comprised of 270 teacher trainees, 30 teacher trainers (tutors) and 10 HODs for Creative Arts. The research instruments used were teacher trainees’ questionnaire; the teacher trainers’ questionnaire; and the HoDs interview schedule. Data analysis was done by the use of descriptive statistics whereby frequencies and percentages were calculated using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software. The results of the study revealed that teacher trainees and trainers perceived resources such as song repertoire and audio-visuals among others as relevant to learner and societal needs but inadequate. The instructional resources in the colleges were perceived to be inadequate and obsolete. Lack of rooms to accommodate practical teaching using the suggested resources was also of concern. It was recommended that colleges should endeavor to provide all the resources suggested in the syllabus and replace those that International Journal for Innovation Education and In addition, emphasis should be put-on teaching the subject in a more practical way through the provision of time and space. The results of this study will be useful top re-service teachers, teacher trainers, policy makers and researchers, on curriculum development and implementation of Creative Arts curriculum for teacher education.
