Student youth participation in decision making on implementation of school agriculture programme
Implementation of school agriculture programme
Abstract
The idea of ‘‘student voice’’ in decision making and change efforts of schools, has emerged as a potential strategy for improving learners’ outcomes. It is expected in its participatory curriculum implementation of secondary school agriculture programme could transfer scientific knowledge through classroom teaching thus attain its academic objective, Also, impart vocational skills in student youth through demonstration of best practices and implementation of agricultural projects in the school farm. However, past studies show that youth that have gone through school agriculture curriculum are inadequately equipped with vocational agricultural skills necessary for self-reliance hence the need for improvement. The objective of this study is to determine the influence of participation of student youth in decision making on implementation of school agriculture programme and to suggest measures to improve its impact on the vocational objective. Student youth are school form fours studying agriculture subject and implementing projects for the Kenya certificate of secondary school examination (KCSE) 2019 which is a national test. Student youth were selected from three categories of schools offering agriculture subject, spread in five typical of Kenyan farm types found in Kisii and Nyamira counties region, Kenya. Cross-sectional survey design was used. Proportionate, stratified, purposive, and simple random sampling procedures were used to select a sample of 361 student youth as respondents for the study. Data was collected using questionnaires, analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics at significance level of 0.05 using SPSS version 21. Results show that student youth rate their level of participation in decision making on implementation of school agriculture programme at a mean score of 6 out of 10 indicating that there is still room for improvement on the same. Student youth rated as very important the five strategies proposed to enhance their engagement in decision making on implementation of school agriculture programme with some plans being ranked more significantly very important. There is a strong positive correlation between the level of participation in decision making and the level of implementation of the agriculture programme. The high rating of strategies proposed indicates the need to address the pertinent issues in them to enhance the quality of participation of student youth in decision making on implementation of the programmes. The strategies ranked as more significantly very important are 5, 4 and 2. These findings will be useful to improve the transfer of knowledge, skills and thus attain the vocational objective. Also to enhance learning and developmental outcomes in young people for self-reliance.
Keywords: Student-youth, decision-making, school agriculture programme, strategies
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