The problem of this study was to determine whether Kenyan Bible college students who receive instruction using a modified (highly structured) mastery learning model will demonstrate greater achievement in knowledge of Christian Church history as compared to Kenyan Bible college students who receive instruction using a traditional (minimally structured) non-mastery learning model. The subjects were 17 second-year Kenyan Bible college students enrolled in a course on Christian Church history, and they were randomly assigned to the two treatment conditions. The researcher served as instructor for both groups. The experimental group used a textbook, detailed syllabus, 200 page study guide (featuring an advance organizer to provide an ideational scaffolding), and a lesson-development feature (providing an enabling objective, congruent questions, and informative feedback for each lesson segment). The control group used a textbook and a less-detailed syllabus. Both groups shared the same classroom lectures, class discussions, required assignments, examinations, and review of examination items. Five tests of Christian church history were administered, including a pretest, three unit tests, and a comprehensive course examination. Test data were analyzed using a 2 x 5 (treatment x testing occasion) repeated measures analysis of variance (RM ANOVA). The percentage of students performing at mastery level (80% correct) on each test was also calculated. Results indicated that, from the second unit test to the comprehensive examination, the modified mastery learning group achieved slightly but consistently higher mean percentage correct scores than the traditional group, but there was no significant main effect for treatment. In contrast, the main effect for testing occasion did reach statistical significance. Across the five test occasions, 8% to 51% more students in the modified mastery learning group attained mastery level as compared to the traditional learning group.

D.Phil. / Being Kenyan means belonging to a number of levels, the national, the local, one’s tribe or ethnic group and supra-state. It means living in a world beyond the Kenyan nation in which absolutism, whether of the ethnic or national civic state, is no longer operative. While encouraging Kenyans to regionalize and globalize, the state in Kenya has also simultaneously sought to construct a nation and develop among Kenyans a sense of national identity. State pronouncements point out that Kenyans need to strengthen their self-identity in the midst of growing globalization and regionalization. They suggest that Kenya needs to teach History in schools to produce a new breed of citizens, imbued with a new vision, characterized by the Kenyan personality, that is individuals who are driven by a deep sense of patriotism and nationalism that transcends ethnic and traditional ties. To achieve this purpose, History teachers must enable students to apply historical knowledge to the analysis of contemporary issues and to deploy the appropriate skills of critical thinking. They teachers need to develop a critical pedagogy in which knowledge, habits, and skills of critical citizenship are taught and learnt. The study adopted a basic interpretive qualitative research design to understand the strategies that the teachers used to develop the attitudes and skills of critical thinking that enable learners to transcend their ethnic and national ties when thinking about issues that are Kenyan. Classroom observations and interviews were employed. The study involved seven provincial secondary schools situated in the Nairobi Province, Kenya. The finding is that to learn history, learners should not be simply inducted into an already existing identity. They have to be assisted to engage in open-ended debates over the nature of this identity as a way of introducing them to historical thinking that links the teaching and learning of history with its disciplined inquiry and core values and make it possible for them to understand their national identity part of a Kenyan culture that is interconnected with others at regional and global levels.