Abstract:
Secondary school agriculture is a subject which has enjoyed wide support both from international and local sources from as early as 1959. Despite these strategies, there exists a distortion between what is taught in schools and what the society expects from school agriculture. The purpose of this paper is to determine why participatory curriculum implementation of school agriculture has not made an impact on the practical aspects of the subject in Kenya. Through qualitative historical design, this paper seeks to document, examine, describe, analyze and interpret how the participatory curriculum implementation strategies have shaped school agriculture. The study targeted relevant individuals and institutions with both primary and secondary sources of information on school agriculture curriculum implementation.129 respondents comprising current and former agriculture teachers, former and current head teachers, current and former education officials whose work related to school agriculture from an initial 28 secondary schools in which agriculture was taught over the study period were purposively sampled. Due to snowball effect, the number of schools rose to 46 and the respondents similarly increased to 174. Data was collected through documentary sources, visits to archives and self-administered interview schedules to a wide range of respondents. The data was analyzed using qualitative data synthesis and analysis techniques involving putting the material collected into narrative account of the stakeholders’ curriculum implementation strategies. The study shows that the current status of the subject in schools does not reflect scientific and practical ideals of school agriculture but shows the emergence of theoretical teaching of the subject contrary to the expectations. The paper ends by identifying the challenges of curriculum implementation and suggests possible strategies of putting the subject on a continuous curriculum reform as the society itself develops and changes.
