Abstract:
The data for this study is drawn from a large study that was conducted with boys from
two primary and two secondary schools in what we are referring to as County-Q in
Kenya. The pseudonym is meant to camouflage the identity of the study site. The
large study has four research objectives but this paper focuses on only one that was
meant to find out the factors that encourage the boy child to engage in sexual activities
at an early age, and ways in which that impacts on teaching and learning. The study
was informed largely by Participatory Action Research (PAR) and focus group
discussions and journal writing were the two main methods used to generate data. The
results indicate that the boy child in the region under investigation lacks positive role
models; and consequently, lack of sex education from conscientious and responsible
adults contribute to early sexual debut, which has negative impact on his academic
performance.
