Effect of learning styles and gender on students’achievement in Secondary school Agriculture subject in Eldoret East Sub-County, Kenya

Abstract

Despite the importance of agriculture in Kenya’s economy, academic achievement of secondary school agriculture students has not been satisfactory. The students’ mean scores in the subject from the year 2007 to 2013 were less than 50 percent of the expected score nationally. The mean scores in Agriculture in Eldoret East Sub-County ranged between 5.11 and 5.62 out of the possible 12.00.This poor performance has been partially attributed to students’learning styles; their interest in the material under study, motivation and the learning environment. However, few empirical studies have been done to determine the link between learning styles and learners’ achievement in secondary school agriculture. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of learning styles on Agriculture students achievement in secondary school in Eldoret East Sub-County. The target population was all secondary agriculture students and the accessible population was 1200 form three agriculture students in the Sub-County co-educational schools. Krejcie and Morgan formula was used to estimate the sample size, which was291. Purposive sampling was used to select 10 co-educational secondary schools from which 291 respondents were systematically selected into the sample by use of random numbers. Descriptive survey study design was adopted for the study. The Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory (KLSI) and an Agriculture assessment test (AAT) were used to collect the data. The reliability of KLSI was 0.745 and that of AAT was 0.71 KLSI was used to profile the learning styles of agriculture students as one of the four learning groups: Converging, Diverging, Assimilating and Accommodating. Statistical Package for Social Sciences computer package version 21 was used in the analysis of the data obtained using frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Chi-square test. The hypotheses were tested at a 0.05 level of significance. The findings in dicated that there was a statistically significant relationship between learning styles and academic achievement at alpha=0.038. The study also revealed that there was a statistically significant difference between gender and achievement based on learning style at alpha = 0.029 and 0.012 for learning styles and gender respectively. This study recommends that Agriculture teachers should identify the learning style of their students and use teaching strategies that complement them. The use of multiple teaching methods will greatly enhance the process of teaching and learning and make it effective and rewarding.