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

Abstract 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 such as Post Harvest Losses (PHL) and poor Food Handling Techniques (FHT). ICT being one of the main components of that should be integrated when implementing Competence Based Education at Junior school level in Kenya, it is expected that it should propel learners to acquire good PHP and FHT. 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. Mixed methods research design was adopted in the study. Simple random sampling was used to select a total of 121 teachers from the 642 Junior schools in Kakamega north Sub-County. Content analysis checklist and a questionnaire were used for data collection. Data gathered from content analysis checklist was analysed both qualitatively while that which was collected from Agriculture teachers was analysed 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. Keywords: Junior School; Curriculum, Agriculture and Nutrition; ICT Intergration