Evaluation of Information and Communication Technology Utilization by Small Holder Banana Farmers in Gatanga District,Kenya

Abstract

Purpose

The study was carried out to identify information communication technologies (ICTs) used in production and marketing of bananas, to determine factors influencing intensity of use of ICT tools and to assess whether use of ICT has a significant influence on adoption of tissue culture bananas by small-scale banana farmers in Gatanga District, Kenya.     

Resistance to extinction as a function of percentage of reward: A reinforcement-level interpretation

Three experiments investigated the effects of percentage of reinforcement on the resistance to extinction of an instrumental running response. In Experiment 1, with N-length held constant, 47% reinforcement during acquisition generated greater resistance to extinction (R_n) than did 77%. In Experiment 2, this result was replicated with both functional N-length and number of N-R transitions held constant. In Experiment 3, R_n was shown to be a function of both N-length and percentage of reinforcement. The results of all three experiments were discussed in terms of Capaldi’s reinforcement level theory and possible alternative explanations.     

SOCIAL SCIENCE AND TEACHING PERFORMANCE

The Introduction of sociology and social work as main subjects in teacher education has raised a controversy as to whether they are as sound a preparation for teaching as the traditional classroom‐based main subjects.

A survey of teaching practice results at Edge Hill College of Education in the years 1966‐70 displays that sociology students perform as well as other students whilst social work students gain significantly more high grades. Since entry qualifications, age, sex, intelligence and personality factors do not differentiate these students an explanation is suggested in terms of the course. This may affect recruitment, the student's classroom performance and his ability “to utilize the social situations of teaching practice.     

Accountability,control and freedom in teacher education in England: Towards a panoptican

This article presents a socio-historical analysis of teacher education in Britain, tracing the changing agents and nature of control of, and consequent levels of freedom in, the enterprise from its inception to the present day. It illustrates the evolution from church, through university to state control and the limited role of the teaching and teacher education professions in each. In doing so it identifies teacher education as a disputed territory of conflicting tendencies, which currently faces unprecedented and draconian central government control and identifies the major factors related to change. It further traces how in the period since the second world war the main source of control has shifted from institution to state, and the main object of control from the student, to teacher educators, to the content and nature of teacher preparation, to the present where all these are centrally controlled, in a fashion not only foreign to British education history but also its culture.