| Scope and method of study. The purpose of this study was to assess the agricultural knowledge of selected kindergarten through sixth grade teachers. This study also sought to describe selected personal characteristics of those teachers and to explore the nature and strength of relationships among those teacher characteristics and their agricultural knowledge. Specific objectives were: (1) To describe teacher characteristics of Agriculture in the Classroom (AITC) trained teachers and non-AITC trained teachers; (2) To develop an appropriate instrument to compare agricultural knowledge differences between AITC trained teachers and non-AITC trained teachers across the five thematic areas of the Food and Fiber Systems Literacy (FFSL) Framework; (3) To describe the relationship between agricultural knowledge and teacher characteristics; and (4) To describe resources and materials used by AITC trained teachers to teach about agriculture. The scope of this study included selected kindergarten through sixth grade teachers in the states of Arizona. Montana, Oklahoma, and Utah during the 2001–2002 school year. The instruments were administered during the fall of 2001. Measures of central tendency and variability, frequency distributions, percentages, and correlation coefficients were used to analyze and describe the data.; Findings and conclusions. It was concluded teachers with Agriculture in the Classroom (AITC) training scored higher overall and across the five thematic areas of the FFSL Framework than teachers with non-AITC training. It was further concluded that all teachers scored higher in theme 2 (history, geography, and culture) followed by theme 3 (science, technology, and environment) and theme 1 (understanding food and fiber systems). AITC trained teachers scored the lowest on theme 4 (business and economics) and non-AITC trained teachers scored the lowest on theme 5 (food, nutrition, and health). The mean percent scores for AITC trained teachers and non-AITC trained teachers were 73.68 and 65.43 respectively. It was concluded that AITC training improved teachers' agricultural knowledge scores and that selected teacher characteristics of agricultural background (growing up on a farm, 4-H membership, type of degree, agriculture courses taken in college, work experience in agriculture, and living in a rural or urban area) provided low relationships associated with agricultural knowledge scores. In addition, teachers who integrated agriculture into their curriculum mainly used books, activities, and videos as resources for teaching about agriculture and participated in school gardens and recycling projects as outdoor activities to teach about agriculture. |
