Evaluation of instructional strategies used in correction of juvenile offenders in rehabilitation schools in Kenya

Abstract

There are diverse rehabilitation programs that have been developed for use in the correction of juvenile offenders in the world and Kenya in particular. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the instructional strategies used in the rehabilitation of juvenile offenders in rehabilitation schools in Kenya.The study tested the null hypothesis that there was no statistically significant difference in the use of instructional strategies between the different institutional categories from the central region in Kenya. The target population comprised 1500 adjudicated juvenile offenders in 10 rehabilitation schools, 132 teaching staff, 10 managers and 10 guidance and counseling personnel. Stratified random sampling was used to select two low risk and two high risk rehabilitation schools; one girls’ and one boys’ institution from each category to make a total of four schools. The sample comprised xxx Data was collected using questionnaires, interview schedules and a document analysis guide. The findings showed that the rehabilitation schools utilized a variety of psycho-educational strategies such as kinesthetic (75%), still pictures and posters (65%), audio-visual resources (75%), cooperative learning strategies (50%) and the use of resource persons (50%), and gender-responsive methods (90%). The hypothesis test results revealed that there was a statistically significant difference in utilization of instructional strategies used in low-risk and high-risk rehabilitation schools (F=3.577, df= 1, 20; p > 0.05). It was therefore concluded that the instructional strategies used for the two cohorts of high-risk and low-risk juvenile offenders were similar. It was recommended that there was need to strengthen the use of psycho-educational strategies by adopting the learner-centered approaches in order to promote behaviour change among the juvenile offenders.