Welcome to Center for Teacher Professional Development and Excellence
The Centre for Teacher Professional Development and Excellence is home to three key sections namely:
- Teaching Practicum and Mentorship
- Teacher Professional Development
- Teaching Excellence and Evaluation
Teaching Practicum and Mentorship
At the core of teacher training is the cardinal and mandatory teaching practicum exercise that runs for one school term. This is usually the second school term. This is the longest school term devoid of much activities such as the reporting of form ones or taking of national examinations. The long duration, usually fourteen weeks gives the student-teacher an opportunity to put into practice the theory learnt in the lecture theatre for five semesters. For the five semesters, they learn to be teachers. During teaching practicum, they practice to be teachers.
In Kenyatta University, teaching practicum is conducted somewhat differently from how it’s run in other institutions in the region in the sense that it has a complementary mentorship component. As a premier teacher training institution in Sub- Sahara Africa, we in Kenyatta University realized that the times have changed and so are the dynamics in teacher-training.
Gone are the days when a University supervisor on Teaching practice assignment would storm into a school with screening wheels and scare by ambush those on practice.
With the advent of mobile telephones and internet, students on practice are able to tell when a supervisor leaves the university, which hotel he checks in to and prepare for the encounter in ways unseen before. This does not produce a well-rounded teacher equal to face the challenges of 21st century. As such, we placed a premium in teaching practice and have trained 2658 teacher-mentors and partnered with 1114 institutional heads.
These Teacher-mentors and institutional heads complement the university supervisors by walking our student-teachers when they are learning the ropes from the day they report to school through to the day the teaching practicum ends. They monitor, mentor and counsel our student-teachers on a daily basis thereby providing them with a living mirror of the kind of teacher that is expected of them. The principals organize sessions where the best subject teachers teach as the student-teacher observes from the back of the classroom.
This ensures that the student-teacher has hands on knowledge handed over to them not just by their professors in the university, but those who have been in the industry for many years practicing.
In 2019, the Centre has had two teaching practice sessions. One run from January to April, 2019 and had 1836 student-teachers.
The second one runs from 29th April, 2019 to August 2, 2019 and has 6,075 student-teachers. This is the largest TP ever in the history of Kenyatta University of these total 7911, there are 4 student-teachers in Diaspora namely; Rwanda, Uganda, China and France. In future we look forward to being represented in every of the five main continents.
Teacher Professional Development
Teacher Professional Development was launched in 2011 as a centre of excellence in the region to train and upgrade teachers in Kenya and the East Africa region. Kenyatta University is known in the region which continuously seeks to enhance this market niche by ensuring that Teacher Education Programmes are in tandem with enhancing education landscape that among other things demand quality teachers who keeps up with new development in the world of change.
In keeping with this the Ministry of Education endeavours to improve the quality of Education through among other things effective pre-service teacher preparation and upgrading teachers in the field, we introduced Bachelor of Education Primary and Diploma in Primary Teacher Education.
For a student to qualify for the award of B. Ed degree in Primary Teacher Education (P.T.E) a candidate shall complete FOUR academic years except where credit waiver is awarded. Diploma in Primary Teacher Education a student completes TWO academic years
Teaching Excellence and Evaluation
This is a key component in ensuring quality teaching at the university and involves among other things Student-Lecturer Evaluation (SLE). This enables the university to track the performance of its teaching staff and identify gaps that are then plugged through further training in areas of proposal and thesis supervision, examinations setting and marking as well as teaching methodologies.
In essence, it means that the Centre takes care of those that have never taught before,-they go for teaching practicum and those that are veterans but have to keep in tandem with evolving times and market dynamics.
From the foregoing, it is evident that the Centre is that fundamental, and inevitable bridge between theory learnt in the lecture theatre, and practice when one takes their bold turn to stand before a real learner and teach. The Centre also offers those already in the field opportunities for self-renewal by way of retooling to cope with changing times and market dynamics.
We keep a database of all our past TP students, so should you feel that you need a teacher-the best teacher- in any of the subject combinations, do not hesitate to drop an email on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
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