By Roy Hezron
Embu County Executive Committee Member of Trade, Tourism, Investment and Industrialization and who is also an educationist has stressed on the need of teacher motivation and deal with matters of teacher integrity through short time training to improve service delivery in the teaching sector.
Speaking to Education News on phone today Dr. Joan Mwende urged the government not to place too much emphasis on paper qualification but address issues affecting teachers in service delivery.
“Teachers have pedagogical skills since that what teacher training does whether you are trained as a Certificate or Diploma teacher. A Certificate teacher who is well motivated and who has integrity would deliver much more than a PhD holder who has no motivation and integrity,” said Dr. Mwende
She added that over emphasis on papers is the biggest problem we are having in society today. A teacher who has been through teacher training has the basic for teaching.
Dr. Mwende urged that more emphasis should be placed on teacher discipline which can be achieved in a shorter time than exposing them to long training considering the current state of the economy.
“They already have the pedagogical skills so what they need is assisting issues of integrity, discipline management and motivation. Whether you take them to school and they come back with a PhD, it wouldn’t make a difference if motivation, discipline and integrity issues are not sorted,” she said.
Dr. Mwende further urged that teachers should be given directions to enable them undertake their teaching roles effectively.
“Give the teacher direction and once given the direction, the teacher is able to navigate through anything…since they are already teachers what is it that determines they need a diploma and not a certificate?” said Dr. Mwende.
In addition, she expressed concern as to whether enough research was done to fully prove that teachers were not delivering because of their qualifications.
“I do not know if any research has been done to prove that teachers are not delivering because they do not have enough qualifications, so is that qualifications going to be a fix to true service delivery?” she questioned.
