The need for a technician training program in Ornamental Horticulture was studied in Davis, Salt Lake and Utah counties utilizing interviews and mailed survey instruments. The greatest job increase during the next five years is anticipated for nursery workers, landscape helpers and greenhouse workers. The smallest anticipated increase is for florists, floor foreman and nursery technicians. Skills requiring the highest degree of competency for workers in ornamental horticulture, according to employers, are retail salesmanship, plant identification and disease and insect control. Courses receiving the highest rating in an ornamental horticulture technician curriculum, as given by owners and managers and by educators, were botany, ornamental deciduous woody plants, soils and fertilizers, gardening techniques, and plant propagation. Courses receiving the lowest rating were three months or more on-the-job training, professional ethics and law, and economic entomology.

Evaluating curricula and resources used by extension professionals and 4-H volunteers to promote science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in Utah is critical to keeping with the 4-H standard of excellence for promoting positive youth development. This study aimed to determine if the Utah 4-H STEM curricula used to promote STEM in 4-H programs across Utah aligned with the 4-H STEM logic model.

The inclusion of students with special needs in regular education classrooms has been required by federal law for more than three decades. However, much of the responsibility for successful accommodation of students with disabilities rests upon the shoulders of teachers. Previous research has indicated that successful inclusion of students with special needs is strongly influenced by the attitude of teachers involved. In this study, all secondary agriculture teachers in Utah were surveyed to determine their attitudes and perceptions related to their willingness and ability to include students with special needs in their classrooms and laboratories. Selected personal and professional characteristics were correlated with these attitudes and perceptions. A large majority of teachers responded that they understand the concept of inclusion, are in favor of including students with disabilities, and have had a positive experience teaching students with special needs. However, fewer respondents indicated that they had the skill level to successfully include students with disabilities. Overall, while teachers indicated willingness to include the students with most of the specific types of disabilities, they were less positive in their perceived abilities to successfully accommodate students with some specific categories of special needs.

Whether or not to provide post-high school education for the farm youth and adult is a highly controversial issue facing many school administrators and teachers of vocational agriculture in Utah today. If one is to start farming and make continuous progress until he becomes a full-fledged farmer in requires several years of training beyond the high school vocational agricultural period. This is because of a lack of maturity and lack of time, during the high school period, when the individual must and should get a general education.

This thesis is based on experiences with innovative agriculture curricula during the 1980's and 1990's. Predictions at the time of the research indicated a need for different instructional roles and educational settings within university undergarduate curricula. The ideas for a New University in the USA and a need for improved agriculture curricula in Australia were compatible with the approach of the Hawkesbury experiential agriculture curricula developed in 1978. The research demonstrated the key competency development aspects of the original experiential curriculum could be maintained in the 1995 university curriculum, within fragmented subjects. There was some evidence the curriculum outcomes were narrower in terms of career awareness. Personality type influenced student perceptions of the difficulty and value of the experiential components of their curriculum. The correlation between experiential curricula and personality type suggets that new curricula content should include the concept of personality and also should be used in designing curricula. New courses in Human Resource Development in Rural Communities were suggested. Other opportunities for using experiential curricula including personality typology were University of Western Sydney majors, summer schools for international students and in-service training courses for governemnt organisations and private enterprises. Several research opportunities were identified. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Maryland, College Park, 1986. / Includes bibliographical references.

Agriculture touches the lives of individuals every day, and some do not even realize it. As a means to educate society, agricultural education programs, such as "AgVenture," have been established to educate youth about the importance of agriculture to both the individual and to society. This study examined the direct impact that one agricultural education program, specifically "AgVenture," had on youth perceptions and knowledge of agriculture. Youth's perceptions and knowledge of agriculture were examined using a pre-test and post-test instrument administered to 41 fourth grade students who participated in the "AgVenture" program. The questions covered the basic agricultural material that the students would be exposed to at the program. Based on findings, it was concluded that the "AgVenture" program had a positive impact on the knowledge of the students regarding agriculture. It was also concluded that the students gained an understanding of what agriculture encompasses and that almost all students were impacted, in a positive manner, in regard to their perceptions of agriculture. Findings revealed that the need continues for agricultural programs to inform youth about agriculture.

Monitoring and evaluation of programs and outcomes is common practice in educational arenas; however, it is not so frequent within professional societies and organizations. By definition, professional organizations are groups of people working together to accomplish a set of goals and objectives that serve the profession. As an organization, the American Association for Agricultural Education (AAAE) serves educators, communicators, and leaders in agriculture through research and application of its principles. A clear understanding of the climate of an organization is important. Understanding the climate of the AAAE could potentially provide AAAE leadership with an understanding of how to improve the functionality of the organization. Organizational climate is a feeling by the members; how they perceive something should be done at that moment. The research design of this nonexperimental quantitative study was descriptive and inferential in nature. The overarching construct proposed to be measured through conducting this study was organizational climate. A four-section electronic data collection instrument, Organizational Climate Inventory (OCI), was researcher-developed. An ANOVA was used to determine if differences in the OCI scales existed based on selected professional characteristics of AAAE members. Many individuals pay dues to be members of the AAAE; the return on their investment was not identified in this study. Nearly three-quarters of the membership of the AAAE is held by academic faculty in professorate ranks. Each of the five research priority areas were represented as were each of the three geographic regions. Both the regional and national meetings are relevant and important to the membership. AAAE members‘ organizational vision was the scale in with the highest mean score; whereas, standard of performance was the scale in which the lowest mean was exhibited. Mean 6σ scores were reported for each of the OCI scales and organized by professional characteristic. Dues-paying-members and non-dues-paying-members did not perceive organizational vision of the AAAE in the same way. Perceptions also differed across all of the scales by region, academic position, and frequency of attendance at regional and national AAAE meetings.

The purpose of this study was to assess student knowledge and perceptions of factors influencing participation in Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) programs. This descriptive study was conducted in 120 randomly selected agricultural education programs throughout four purposively selected states representative of the National FFA regions. Within each state the programs randomly selected to participate were from FFA divisions characterized as having urban city-centers with outlying rural/suburban areas. Students in Florida, Indiana, Missouri, and Utah completed a researcher-designed questionnaire assessing knowledge and perceptions on factors influencing SAE participation. A response rate of 43.3% (N = 120, n = 52) was achieved, with questionnaires completed by 1,038 students. According to findings of this study 45.6% (n = 473) of the students participated in SAE programs, with most categorized as an entrepreneurship SAE and classified as a livestock project. Students could only identify at most three of five SAE categories, and those without a SAE program were either not or somewhat familiar with the five SAE categories. Students surveyed in Missouri and Utah appeared to have the strongest SAE knowledge. Each state appeared to have three main types of school resources available for use by student SAE programs. Student perceptions indicated that teachers did encourage all students to have a SAE program and apply for awards and recognition; however, most did not receive awards and recognition for their SAE program. Students reported receiving SAE help from their teacher on a monthly basis most frequently. Most students used a paper-based SAE record book which they updated weekly or monthly. Students on average received a total of nine to 34 days of classroom SAE instruction and a total of eight to 33 days of classroom recordkeeping instruction during enrollment in agricultural education courses. Factors such as enjoyment of agricultural education courses, parental and teacher support and encouragement, resources (money and facilities), and opportunities for awards and recognition did not seem to influence student SAE participation. Contrary to previous research, involvement in community and school activities did not seem to negatively influence student SAE participation. Students did not believe they needed more SAE and recordkeeping instruction.

The purpose of this study was to describe the perceptions of former beginning agriscience teachers and to explore the relationships between these perceptions, the characteristics of former beginning agriscience teachers, work satisfaction, work-life balance, and their reasons for leaving the profession. Information was gathered from former secondary agriscience teachers across Texas who left the profession during the 2001-2 through 2005-6 academic years. A survey instrument was created specifically for this study through which information about perceived work satisfaction, work-life balance, effect of work-life on attrition, and demographic characteristics of the former beginning agriscience teachers was gathered. Data were analyzed using descriptive and correlational statistics. For this population, work satisfaction, work-life balance, and teacher attrition were not found to differentiate among demographic and career characteristics: age, gender, ethnicity, employment, salary, teacher training institution, years of experience, agriscience department size, hours on the job, or FFA area association. The results suggested evidence of an inverse relationship between work satisfaction and beginning agriscience teacher attrition as well as an inverse relationship between work-life balance and agriscience teacher attrition. Nearly half of all respondents reported the wanting of balance between professional work and personal life as their chief reason for leaving the profession. Closely following this reason were the placement of students in agriscience classes who did not choose to be in the elective courses and too much time away from family. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents offered the recommendation to set a maximum student enrollment per class period and to decrease the number of class preparations/course sections taught by beginning teachers. Over half of the respondents made the recommendation to share the load of shows and contests equally among teachers and to increase the number of teachers in the agriscience department. To improve the preparation and retention of agriscience teachers, two-thirds of the respondents recommended a salary increase. The recommendation following salary and given by nearly half of respondents was to provide mentor teachers. And, one-third of respondents offered the recommendation for more follow-ups from university teacher trainers.