RESEARCH ARTICLE
Choice Shifts in School Disciplinary Decision Making: Analysis of Age Differences of Panel Members Alternate Title: Analysis of Age Differences of Panel Members
Peter J.O. Aloka1, *
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2020Volume: 13
First Page: 86
Last Page: 94
Publisher ID: TOPSYJ-20041701
DOI: 10.2174/1874350102013010086
Publisher Item Identifier: BMS-TOPSYJ-2019-38
Article History:
Received Date: 15/11/2019Revision Received Date: 09/03/2020
Acceptance Date: 30/03/2020
Electronic publication date: 25/04/2020
Collection year: 2020
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Decision making is critical to each organization and it requires the ability to find a possible balance between risky and cautious decisions. The Kenyan secondary schools are mandated by the Ministry of Education to manage students’ misbehaviors by the disciplinary panels.
Aim:
The present study investigated the choice shifts in disciplinary decision making in Kenyan secondary schools based on age groups of the panel members.
Methods:
The Quasi-Experimental Pretest-Posttest Design was adopted. The study targeted 360 teachers- members of disciplinary panels in 45 secondary schools in the Rongo sub-county of Kenya. A sample size of 78 members of disciplinary panels in 10 secondary schools was involved. This was 22% of the target population of members of disciplinary panels in the Rongo district. The choice shift in decisions was ascertained using the Modified Choice Dilemma Questionnaire. The validity of the tools was ensured by the expert judgment by two Kenyan psychologists, while the reliability was determined using the internal consistency method and an alpha of 0.695 was reported.
Results:
The results of the Multivariate Analysis Of Variance indicated that there were differences in choice shifts from the pre to post-disciplinary hearing decisions among the members of selected school disciplinary panels on the basis of their age groups (Wilk’s Lambda (λ) test: F (12, 188) = 7.40, P = 0.000, P < 0.05).
Conclusion:
It was concluded that the age of the members of disciplinary panels influenced the nature of choice shifts in decisions. It was recommended that principals should ensure that the membership of school disciplinary panels is broad-based.
