Agriculture in Secondary Schools in Mukaa Sub-County of Makueni County, Kenya

Abstract

This study determined students’ attitude towards selected agriculture teaching methods; cooperative, demonstration, field trips and lecture in secondary schools in Mukaa Sub-county of Makueni County, Kenya. This study was guided by the following specific objectives: To determine; students’ attitude towards use of cooperative method of teaching agriculture, students’ attitude towards the use of demonstration method of teaching agriculture, students’ attitude towards use of field trip method of teaching agriculture, students’ attitude towards the use of lecture method of teaching agriculture and the difference in the attitude of students towards the various teaching methods in agriculture between Sub-county, County and extra County secondary schools in Mukaa Sub-county. This study was informed by the theory of reasoned action. descriptive research design was adopted.four wards in ukaa Sub Countyere selected by use of purposive random sampling. The target population of the study consisted of 12,963 all agriculture students in secondary schools in Mukaa Sub County. A sample size of 120 respondents was randomly selected from accessible population of 1,773 Form Three students in the four wards in Mukaa Sub-county. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected using semi structured questionnaire. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze the data. The results were presented using frequencies, means, percentages, independent sample t-test and one way ANOVA. The study results established that the attitude of students towards the four selected methods, cooperative, demonstration, field trips and lecture was positive, and was the same for male and female students across subcounty, county and extra county schools. The most commonly used method of teaching agriculture was established to be lecture method, followed by demonstration, although with a large difference between the two. The third commonly used was the cooperative method and the last was field trips. The most preferred method of teaching by agriculture students was established to be field trips and the least preferred was demonstration method. The study recommends that the Ministry of Education (MoE) through the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) should formulate policies that will enable teachers to use student centered methods in teaching of agriculture. It also recommends agriculture teachers to combine various methods of teaching agriculture as the situation demands, to make teaching and learning more effective.