Abstract
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.