| Scope and method of study. The purpose of this study was to determine the perceptions of Oklahoma agricultural education teachers about the issue of granting academic science credit for agriculture courses for the purpose of meeting high school graduation and college admission requirements. Of the 432 agricultural education teachers and FFA advisors, employed in state-reimbursed programs during the 1997--98 school year, 315 participated in the study. Those teachers who did participate completed a quantitative survey which included open-ended questions. Since the study looked at an entire population and no inferences were made, descriptive statistics, such as frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations were used to analyze the data.;Findings and conclusions. Seventy-six percent of the responding agricultural education teachers in Oklahoma supported the idea of granting academic science credit for agriculture courses. Teachers also thought parents of agricultural education students and the general public in their communities would support the idea, however, they perceived their faculty, counselor, school board, and administrators as non-supporters of the concept. Teachers believed granting science credit for agriculture courses would increase enrollment and would improve the image of the program. However, teachers also thought it would increase the enrollment of low-performing students in their classes and prevent them from teaching vocational skills. To grant science for agriculture courses, teachers supported the method of making minor changes in course content and completing a special workshop for a science endorsement. A strong majority of teachers reported they integrated, on a daily basis, many of the priority science skills identified by the Oklahoma Department of Education. Also, agricultural education teachers were most comfortable with integrating concepts of general math, physical science, biology, and economics. They were less comfortable with integrating the concepts of statistics, advanced math, physics, and psychology. |
