Teachers’ perspective on their readiness for experiences of overcrowded classrooms: Reflections from Kenya and South Africa

Abstract

Governments in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have increasingly pushed for Education for All (EFA), however, with little effort to expand the necessary resources, which raises concerns over teachers’ abilities to handle overcrowded classrooms. Through the perspectives of Africentric and reslience approaches, this paper explores teachers’ perspectives on their training, readiness, and experiences of overcrowded learning environments. It is important to understand their experiences holistically and how teaching processes and learning outcomes are affected. Through a qualitative approach, this study sought teachers’ views on their training and how prepared they were for their experiences in overcrowded learning spaces. A purposive sample of 11 foundation phase teachers (four from South Africa and seven from Kenya) were invited to participate in the current study. Thematic analysis was utilised to process the qualitative data collected through focus group discussions, obserations, conversational and semi-structured interviews. The findings indicate that teachers perceived lack of acknowledgment to their ‘plight’ in handling many learners, contrary to official teacher-child ratio. Concerns on teacher training lacking in actual experiences of large classrooms that have diverse learners while using minimal infrastructural provisions emerged. However, teachers’ perceptions that difficult circumstances were opportunities for better learning outcomes was indicative of their readiness, being creative in teaching and resilient, while those who perceived large class sizes as overwhelming and having lower learning outcomes were also resilient in their functions as teachers. This study makes suggestions for a holistic approach to addressing concerns of teachers in crowded classrooms which includes teacher training, upskilling, infrastructural development, updating policies in teacher recruitment and peer teaching, resource generation, and use of modern instructional approaches to teaching among others.