Early Childhood Development Pedagogy and Student Performance

The study was designed to establish the effect of the ECD programme on pupil performance at grade one level. It aimed at highlighting ECD pedagogy that enhance effective teaching of early graders. The purposeful sample used consisted of four primary schools in Chivi South District, Masvingo Region and involved four teachers and eight pupils from schools. For data collection the interview, document analysis and field notes were used. The interview used followed the guidelines of Bogdan and Biklen (1992), Maykut and Morehouse (1994) and Krathwohl (1993) who discuss how to use the interview in social research and education. The use of documents and field notes was guided by Krathwohl's work of (1993) on methods of Educational and Social Science Research. To analyse data, emergent categories were used and the results of the study confirmed that exposure to ECD programme enhances pupil performance at grade one level. Teachers favour to teach pupils who have done the ECD programme because they have the base upon which they can build. Major recommendations were that ECD centres should be established as satellites to existing primary schools.