Influence of Teachers Characteristics on Academic Performance of Students in Secondary Agriculture, in Rachuonyo North Sub County, Kenya

This study aimed at finding out the influence of teachers’ characteristics on students’ academic performance in agriculture. The objective of this study was to determine the influence of teachers’ characteristics (training, experience, and teaching method) on the students’ academic performance in agriculture. The purpose of this study was to determine how teachers’ characteristics influence students’ performance in agriculture. Co-relational design was adopted for the study and stratified sampling was used to select schools for the study. The target population was 38 agriculture teachers. The sample size was 30 agriculture teachers who were involved in the study. Data was collected using a questionnaire, for agriculture teachers, as respondents. The instrument was pilot tested to ascertain its reliability and the reliability coefficient was 0.72. Experts ascertained the instruments validity before being used for data collection. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics including frequencies, percentages, means, as well as, standard deviation, while inferential statistics included Spearman’s Rho and simple regression analysis were used to test the hypotheses, with levels of significance set at 0.05. Statistical Package for Social Sciences software was used for data analysis. The results of the study found that teachers’ experience had a t-value of 3.172 which was greater than 1.96 with a significance of 0.04, which was statistically significant. The researcher concluded that teachers experience had a statistically significant influence on students’ performance in agriculture. Demonstration and field trips methods were found to be effective teaching methods which agriculture teachers should be encouraged to use and should be implemented in all teacher education programmes in Kenya.