An Appraisal of the Status of integration of Social Studies Curriculum in Kenyan Primary Schools

Abstract

This study was geared towards appraising the curriculum status of integrated Social Studies in Kenyan primary schools in the wake of a lot of fluid content which keeps on changing day in day out. To deal with the quick changes there’s need to use Curriculum foundations sieves to allow only concrete content in the integrated Social Studies Curriculum. 250 teachers were sampled using stratified simple random sampling for teachers and purposive sampling for Tutors from the two Primary School Teacher Training College in Nakuru Sub County, the chair-persons of the Head teachers of the five zones of Nakuru Sub-County and the Quality Assurance and Standards Officers. Research Instruments were questionnaire and semi-structured interview guide. This research study adopted a mixed research methods approach. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were applied in the analysis of data. Findings show that the content of integrated Social Studies (SST) is beneficial to learners, it contributes to the attainment of the national goals of education, it has been changing very quickly within short span of time hence need to elongate time before next revision is done, the Social Studies teachers need to be taken for refresher courses to improve their teaching skills, there’s relationship among topics taught from one class and the next and that integrated Social Studies curriculum has integrated emerging issues. The recommendation is that the government through Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) should take time before reviewing Social Studies curriculum.