THE USE OF NON-CONVENTIONAL INSTRUCTIONAL APPROACH TO INCREASE AGRICULTURE STUDENTS’ INTEREST IN PURSUING POST-SECONDARY SCHOOL AGRICULTURE

Abstract

Agricultural science is very crucial in secondary schools since it leads to the acquisition of skills highly looked for in agricultural and allied industries. To reap the benefits of Agriculture in providing employment for the youth, more students are needed to enrol in it at secondary school and post-secondary school levels; however, this is not the case. This can be attributed to poor knowledge acquisition in Agriculture learned in class, negative attitudes and perceptions about general Agriculture and eventually poor performance in national exams and few school graduates opting to take Agriculture at higher levels including taking up the agricultural careers. This study hence delved into determining how learning outcomes in Agriculture could be impacted on by adapting the Supervised Agricultural Experience Programme (SAEP) in Migori County. Specifically, it sought to compare the levels of interest in pursuing post-secondary school Agriculture between learners involved in SAEP and those involved in conventional learning programmes. It applied the pre-test post-test control group design with a target of 3,600 secondary school Agriculture students in Form Three. Simple random sampling and proportionate stratified sampling were used to obtain 384 respondents who were equally assigned to treatment and control groups after which the treatment group took part in a SAEP. A questionnaire and a learning outcome test were used to collect demographic and learning outcome data. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse data. Results showed that the level of interest in pursuing Agriculture post-secondary school was moderate without intervention and that SAEP significantly improved students’ interest to study Agriculture at post-secondary school. It is recommended that learning activities should be hands-on for students to develop positive attitude in Agriculture and schools should ensure that the farming activities are learner-owned to increase the interest in the subject at school and for further studies.