Secondary school teachers perceptions regarding the process of teaching sustainable agriculture in the agricultural education curriculum

Sustainable agriculture and the perceptions of high school agriculture teachers in the North Central Region of the United States

“…This lack of clarity can be a problem because gender may determine the dimensions of sustainable agriculture that an individual adopts and emphasizes (Chiappe & Flora, 1998;Peter, Bell, Jarnagin & Bauer, 2000). Although there is no certainty whether the proportion of female high school agriculture teachers in the target population and those in the returned questionnaires were comparable, there is evidence that the gender proportions of male and female teachers found in this study reflect the general trends from past studies (Okeafor, 2002;Sikinyi, 2003;Straquadine, 1997).…”

“…Other researchers found agricultural educators or high school agriculture teachers had positive perceptions/attitudes toward sustainable agriculture practices (Koralalage, 2001;O'Sullivan, 2000;Udoto & Flowers, 2001;Whent, 1997;Williams, 2000;Williams & Wise, 1997). Additionally, other studies have indicated that agricultural educators '/teachers ' prior knowledge of sustainable agriculture impacted positively the attitudes/perceptions of sustainable agriculture and/or use of sustainable agriculture knowledge to teach farmers or students (Conner & Kolodinsky, 1997;Okeafor, 2002).…”

“…The rest of the scales were treated as summated or single item scales depending on the specific research objective in question. The sustainable agriculture topics/practices covered the four natural resource areas of soil, water, air, and agro-forests, including their uses and technologies (Borsari, 2001;Okeafor, 2002). The last section of the instrument was used to provide respondents' data on state, gender, level of education, teaching experience in agriculture and farming background (Appendix C).…”

“…Construct validity for the instrument was partly established by generating all elements of the sustainable agriculture construct from references to research literature on beliefs/perceptions of farmers/the public/teachers regarding sustainable agriculture practice, adoption of selected sustainable agriculture practices, and the extent to which agriculture teachers teach selected sustainable agriculture topics/practices in the agriculture curriculum (Agbaje et al, 2001;Hasannein, 1999;Hassanein & Kloppenburg, 1995;Kloppenburg, Henrickson, & Stevenson, 1996;Okeafor, 2002;Udoto & Flowers, 2001;Williams, 2000). Application of the relevant literature in the constitution of the constructs used in the instrument was assumed to have contributed to instrument construct (internal) validity.…”

“…It is also a measure of the extent of inter-item consistency in measuring the trait under study (Ary et al, 2002). The values of Cronbach's coefficient alpha for the instrument scales on perceptions regarding selected agriculture practices, and the extent to which selected sustainable agriculture topics were taught in the past studies (Agbaje et al, 2001 ;Alonge & Martin, 1995;Koralalage, 2001;Okeafor, 2002;Udoto & Flowers, 2001), ranged from .62 to .97 and .86 to .91, respectively. Therefore, the values of Cronbach's coefficient alpha for this study fell within the range of the scales constructed for measuring similar sustainable agriculture constructs in past studies.…”