ICT INTEGRATION IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE AGRICULTURE AND NUTRITION CURRICULUM: ENHANCING LEARNER’S MASTERY OF POST-HARVEST PRACTICES AND FOOD HANDLING TECHNIQUES AT JUNIOR SCHOOLS IN KENYA

Özet

Currently, one of the main global challenges is how to ensure food security for a world growing population in order to achieve the second Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of ending hunger. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization projection, food production will need to grow by 70% to feed the exponentially growing world population which will reach 9 billion by 2050. It is quite ironical that while the state of food insecurity especially in the developing world rises, massive quantities of food are rendered unfit for consumption due to spoilage along the agricultural value chain. Amidst emerging challenges hampering agricultural productivity such as pollution, soil degradation and climate change, an effective mechanism to reduce on food loss along the agricultural value chain is necessary. Education is considered as a catalyst for achieving social and economic change and for this reason, many nations across the globe, Kenya inclusive have adopted competence based approach to education which aims at equipping learners with skills necessary in addressing emerging societal challenges. One of the main components of the Competence Based Curriculum is ICT integration as it is known to bring a wide range of learning experiences into the classroom. This study therefore sought to explore the extent to which ICT integration in the implementation of Agriculture and Nutrition curriculum by teachers to enhance learner’s mastery of post-harvest practices and food handling techniques at the Junior school in Kenya. Descriptive survey research design was used. Simple random sampling was used to sample a total of 121 teachers of Agriculture from the 642 Junior schools in Kakamega north Sub-County. Content analysis checklist and a questionnaire were used for data collection. Data was analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively using SPSS version 26. The study established that JSS Agriculture and Nutrition curriculum designs have sufficiently recommended ICT integration on the content covering PHP and FHT. However, most agriculture teachers at Junior school were found not to have sufficiently integrated ICT when teaching Agriculture and Nutrition subject content to help learners master PHP and FHT. Therefore, this study recommended that Government of Kenya should equip JSS with enough ICT facilities to facilitate proper ICT integration when learning.