The Application of Referent Authority by Teachers in Enhancement of Classroom Role Performance: A Case of Machakos County in Kenya
Keywords:
Referent Authority, Teacher Classroom Role Performance, Class ManagementAbstract
Teachers’ classroom authority is fundamental for their successful role performance. Traditionally, teachers enjoyed legitimacy over the students, but that has been challenged by educational policy reforms and technology to a two-way social relationship with students referred to as referent authority. Unfortunately, school policies and school rules and regulations do not attract the use of personal characteristics in class as teachers are supposed to wield legitimacy. On the other hand, school curricula advocate for use of hidden curriculum as a way of achieving the whole personal performance. This article endeavored to establish the extent to which teachers used referent authority and the influence it had on their classroom role performance in Machakos County. A descriptive survey research design was employed. The target population was 369 principals, 4365 teachers, and 63973 form two and form Three students in 369 public secondary schools in the County. A total of 619 respondents were sampled using systematic, stratified, simple random and proportional sampling techniques. An interview schedule was used to collect data from the principals and questionnaires were used to gather data from teachers and students. Analyzed data from both teachers and students showed that they strongly agreed that teachers applied referent authority. Inferential statistics showed that referent authority had a significant influence on the role performance of teachers. This was also supported by head teacher responses who concluded that teachers who used referent authority in class influenced to a larger extent their performance. The study concluded that when teachers use more referent authority practices, their performance in the classroom improved more as compared to when they used the other three authority types. This study recommended that the Ministry of Education, universities/colleges and TSC need to review teacher training curricula to equip teachers in the use of practices and approaches that lead to referent authority.
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