Teachers Level of ICT Training and Skills on the integration of ICT in Teaching and Learning of Agriculture in Secondary Schools in Masaba South Sub-County, Kisii County, Kenya

Information Communication Technology has improved service delivery in many sectors of the economy including the education sector in many parts of the world. However, its integration in teaching and learning of agriculture in secondary schools in Kenya has remained low and limited. Few studies have been carried out to determine the how equipping teachers with ICT skills can influence its integration in the teaching and learning of agriculture in secondary schools. This study therefore investigated how ICT training and skills influence integration of ICT in teaching and adopted a descriptive survey research design. It targeted all agriculture teachers and students in public secondary schools in Masaba South Sub-County in Kisii County, Kenya. Data from the Sub-county education office was used to sample schools with ICT facilities as well as population of form three students taking agriculture. Eighteen public schools were purposively selected because they offered Agriculture as one of the subjects in their curriculum. Further purposive sampling was made to recruit at least one instructor in the subject area, with the teacher who had served longest in the Agriculture department in each school being selected for the study, giving a total of 20 teachers. Stratified random sampling was used to select 20 form three agriculture students giving a total of 360 students. Data was collected by use of two sets of questionnaires, one for the teachers and the other for students) and an observation schedule. Data was analyzed both quantitatively using SPSS version 21 and qualitatively. Most teachers (53.3 %) had acquired ICT skills which could be used for integration of ICT in teaching and learning of agriculture.86.6 % of schools in Masaba South Sub-county had less than 20 computers for the entire student population. With most schools having a population of 300-600 students, a student to computer of ratio of 1: 40 was established. Most students (82.7 %) exhibited skills in use of ICT facilities but only 1.9 % of the students used the ICT facilities for learning agriculture. While 60 % of the schools in Masaba sub-county had technical support, only 40 % had a policy for ICT integration in teaching and learning of agriculture. The results of the study show that there is low integration of ICT in teaching and learning of agriculture in Masaba South Sub-county since only 33.3 % of the teachers used ICT for teaching agriculture. With these findings, the study recommended that training institutions and universities include training of teachers on how to integrate ICT in their teaching and learning of agriculture in public secondary schools with the training including the use of ICT facilities such as Smart Boards, PowerPoint, and other related software as part of microteaching training