Date of Award

2014

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Master of Education (MEd)

First Supervisor/Advisor

Peter Kajoro

Second Supervisor/Advisor

Dr. Mweru Mwingi

Department

Institute for Educational Development, East Africa

Abstract

Science is an important human tool for taming nature because explanations and predictions that science makes empower human beings to be able to utilize the natural resources that abound in the world. Therefore science considerably touches the personal, social, professional and cultural lives of everyone. Young people’s understanding of science is therefore crucial to prepare to live in a more scientific world than today’s. The school is the ultimate center for such preparations, where learners’ prior-knowledge will be joined with the contextual and scientific knowledge in inquiry and discovery teaching and learning approaches established by competent teachers under effective supportive leadership. Therefore, school leaders are the pillars to create conducive learning environment which allows and support inquiries and discoveries to engage and motivate learners towards science. Consequently, this study intended to explore how school leadership support science teaching and learning at primary school. To achieve this, the inquiry adopted qualitative case study design in a rural public primary school in Same district in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. The purposefully sampled participants were head teacher, deputy head teacher, academic teacher, head of science department, six science teachers and eight pupils. Interviews, focus group discussions, observations, and document analysis were data collection methods used. Data revealed that school leaders execute their roles including monitoring, supervising, assessing and guiding the teaching learning process and the school community. They perform this in collaborating with other teachers in transformative and distributive leadership styles. Data also shows that school leaders set programmatic structures to support science teaching and learning including evening classes and fund mobilization for purchasing teaching learning resources. Further, data indicated that, school leadership secure science teaching and learning resources from the government, NGOs, CBOs and parents although they are inefficient. However it emerged from findings that science is not considered special as stressed by its importance to our lives and by literatures. The study therefore recommends that school leadership should design and be creative to support science teaching and learning within their context.

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