Abstract:
There is a need to help secondary school students to attain higher academic achievements in the
national examinations. This is because good performance in these examinations acts as a channel
through which students proceed to higher education levels and good jobs. It has been argued that
persons with high self concept are more effective and do better at a given level of intelligence than
persons with low self-concept. This study seeks to find out whether the way the teacher labels
students affects the students’ self-concept. The study employs an ex post facto research design. The
target population includes all the 360 Form Four students in the six public secondary schools in
Mwala District of Machakos County. A proportionate random sample of 186 students has been
selected from the six schools. Data has been collected through administration of questionnaires to
the respondents. The collected data has then been processed and analyzed using both descriptive
and inferential statistics with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 16.0
for windows. The findings show that the kind of teachers’ feedback about academic performance
and ability of the students influences their self-concept. The findings of this study could help
teachers to boost the level of self-concept of the students and this in turn may lead to the
improvement in academic performance. It could also help the Ministry of Education to see the
necessity of training more teacher counselors to enhance positive self –concept in students. Lastly,
it may help teachers to focus on positive feedback about academic performance and ability of
students in order to encourage them to work hard. This may in turn enhance improvement in
students’ performance.
