Junior secondary school teachers drawn from across Nyandarua County have been trained on blended training and pedagogic gender-responsive teaching and learning in STEM education.
The three-day training of STEM teachers is being carried out by the Centre for Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education in Africa (CEMASTEA) and is funded by the government of Kenya and the government of Belgium.
Speaking at Nyahururu High School during the conclusion of the workshop, Dr. Mary Sichangi, Field Coordinator for the Partnerships & Linkages department (CEMASTEA), said that they conducted a training needs assessment and established that teachers had challenges in the integration of gender in STEM education.
She said that CEMASTEA, being a pedagogical institution, had designed the three-day course to foundationally lay an eight-week course for Junior Secondary School teachers to fully get ready for STEM going forward.
She added that they had built a mobile app to support the teachers in sustainability emphasising that the app uses no internet; thus, it’s ideal even for schools in very remote regions.
“We foresee this being the future, and we believe CEMASTEA has designed the future of professional development for Junior school teachers,” said Dr. Sichangi.
On their side, Clinton Arita and Chrispina Chege, the president and deputy president of the Nyandarua STEM teachers, lauded the uptake of the training, saying that the teachers can now achieve the 60 percent boarding of the STEM pathway by learners by giving them equal chances.
They added that the training had taught them a lot and will help them to improve assessment skills while enabling the learners and teachers to achieve their full potential.
Initially, teachers had a challenge of taking a summative assessment without considering an individual learner’s potential.
By Antony Mwangi
