An Assessment on The Use of Mobile Phones By High School Students in Nachu Area Kikuyu Subcounty.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess on the use of mobile phones by high school students in Nachu area kikuyu sub county and the extent to which it has influenced their learning behaviors either positively or negatively. The objectives of the study were to find out to what extent students in Nachu area use mobile phones, to find out to what extent students in Nachu area use phones for academic reasons, to determine to what extent students in Nachu area use phones for non-academic reasons and to determine the response by which the administration has responded to reduce phone use by students at school. The researcher associates his work based on the social learning theory. Five schools were sampled which had a fair representation, being two girls boarding, two Boys boarding and one Mixed day. Form three and four students were mainly used since they have stayed in school for a longer period and therefore could provide the relevant information required. The population being varied and large, stratified sampling technique, simple random sampling and purposive sampling approaches were used. The study was descriptive in nature and used both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Questionnaires and interviews were used to gather information from the respondents. Quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and presented in pie charts tables and graphs while qualitative data was reorganized from the questionnaires and put down in tabula forms, indexed where necessary and then analyzed. The researcher finds that there is a rampant use of phones at schools most of which is unknown to them and that a majority of respondents did not see the need to be overstrict to students using phones. The Researcher recommends the government to integrate mobile phone use as a part of ICT in its education policy where students will learn and understand best use of mobile phones, set a unit or topic in ICT subject where appropriate mobile phone use will be taught, the government to improve its educational policy on use of phones and schools to work to ensure that students are accessing mobile phones as learning tools to improve their performance rather than as destructive tools, which lead to poor performance. It is my prayer that the outcome of this research and the implementation of the recommendations will not only improve the learner’s future opportunities but also go a long way to improve administration in schools and enhance good student- teacher relationship on use of phones.