Principals’ perception towards collaborative decision making as An alternative disciplinary method in Kenya

Abstract

Discipline is important in any form of management both for teachers, students and the school administration. Students discipline is a global concern. There are various disciplinary methods of managing school discipline. However, governments have come up with alternative disciplinary methods to replace corporal punishment. One of the popular alternative disciplinary methods that have been taken up by educational institutions is collaborative decision making as an alternative disciplinary method to manage discipline in schools in spite of the fact that it has its own challenges in its implementation. This paper is focused on principals’ perception towards collaborative decision making in public secondary schools. The study adopted Ex post facto research design. The target population for the study was 333 public secondary schools. The study used questionnaires and interview guides as tools for data collection. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze, tabulate and present data. The Chi-square (x2) test was used to determine the strength of association between holding class meetings for collaborative decision making and students’ discipline and to test whether the observed relationship is significant or not. The significance level was set at alpha = 0.05. The study established that holding class meetings with students for collaborative decision making had a p-value 0.373 indicated that there is no significant difference between holding class meetings and students’ discipline. The study also established that collaborative decision making was done within the school set up to enhance discipline. The study recommended that all schools should practice holding meetings for collaborative decision making as an avenue which could be used by students to talk freely on issues affecting them and the school administration to implement agreed upon decisions.