Vocationalization of education in Kenya: the Classroom Practice and the Learners’ Responsibilities for Change in the 21st Century

Abstract

Abstract

The essence of education is to prepare an individual for lifelong experiences after schooling. Education as offered in schools today is expected to give the teacher a chance to impart knowledge and skills in the learner, and for the learner to be informed and be able to put into practice what has been gained in the course of time. The Kenyan curriculum and goals of education are clearly stipulated if followed to the latter. Basically, the classroom practice by both the teachers and the learners exhibit an academic rather than a dual system that is expected to meet the needs of both the individual and those of the communities which form subsets of the society at large. It is upon this premise that education of a given country must prepare its individuals in schools so as to meet the goals of education at any one given time of a country’s history. This paper looks at the perspective of vocationalization of education in Kenyan at this century. The history of education ever since independence in 1963 by focusing on the Ominde commission through the Koech report of 1999 have been emphatic that education must meet the national goals of education as stipulated in the curriculum. But what is edging the practice that has not revolutionalized the socio-economic, cultural and political development of Kenya? Differentiated Instruction is a teaching theory based on the premise that instructional approaches should vary and be adapted in relation to individual and diverse students in classroom aimed at achieving diversified learning and common practices in the career. The challenges herein are: where have we gone wrong as a nation, what is the practice in the classroom, when can the nation be out of this dilemma, who is to blame for the status quo and finally what is the way forward? By addressing these questions, the education system will be responsive to the changes in time and Kenya will be on the path to successful recovery.