Perceptions of Preservice Teachers Toward Integrating Science Into School-Based Agricultural Education Curriculum

Abstract

Agricultural education is at an interesting point in the cycle of agriscience integration. Current preservice teachers have had the opportunity to be taught in both secondary and post-secondary programs that have fully embraced agriscience integration. This study investigates the perceptions of these budding agricultural educators toward science integration. The perceptions of 191 preservice teachers who responded to the questionnaire concurred with most perceptions of inservice teachers as reported in other studies. Preservice teachers indicate an intention to increase the amount and quality of integration in their future classrooms compared to what they perceive occurring today and that this will result in an increase in student enrollment. They also suggested increasing the number of science courses in the preservice curriculum and placing student teachers with inservice teachers who have successfully integrated science in agriculture.