Influence of Teachers’ age, gender, and personality on Students’ Academic Achievement in Kiswahili: A case of Public Secondary Schools in Murang’a and Kiambu Counties

Purpose: Teachers have a vital influence on students’ academic achievement. The steady decline in academic performance of secondary school students has generated a lot of interest among stakeholders in the education sector in Kenya. Despite efforts by teachers to improve their skills and technical expertise the performance of students in KCSE examinations and Kiswahili in particular has not been encouraging. In the year 2020, Murang’a and Kiambu posted the least mean scores of 4.3 and 4.4 respectively in comparison to neighboring counties Nyeri and Kirinyaga which had mean scores of 4.62 and 4.64 respectively. The purpose of this paper was to establish the nexus between Kiswahili teacher characteristics and students’ academic achievement in Kiswahili at the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination (KCSE) results in Kiambu and Murang,a counties. The objective of this paper was to establish the influence of teachers’ age, gender, and personality characteristics on students’ academic achievement in KCSE examination results. Methodology: A descriptive survey research design was utilised. The target population was 29,134 comprising 512 principals, 1,172 teachers, and 27,450 students across 512 secondary schools in Murang’a and Kiambu counties. A sample size of 103 schools through proportionate and 299 Kiswahili teachers, and 395 students was obtained through Yamane sampling formula. Purposive sampling criteria were used to obtain 103 principals across the 103 sampled schools. Data was collected using a questionnaire for principals, students, and teachers. Results: It was established that teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge, professional skills and academic achievement, and teachers’ characteristics positively influenced student academic achievement in Kiswahili at KCSE, (M = 4.0, SD = 1.1), (M = 3.9, SD = 0.8) and (M = 3.8, SD = 1.1) respectively. ANOVA test showed teachers characteristics in terms of gender was the only aspect which statistically, significantly differed with teachers’ response and the response from principals and students, p =. 000. These findings emphasized the complexity of teachers’ factors affecting students’ academic achievement. Conclusion: There is a nexus between teacher characteristics and students’ academic achievements as perceived by principals, teachers, and students. This is related to recommendations that every practicing teacher should enroll in a teacher performance development program initiated by TSC to enhance and update teacher pedagogical content knowledge in teaching for an impressive students’ academic achievement.