The Effectiveness of using a workshop to change agriscience teacher behaviors towards agricultural water management instruction

Date

2009-05

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Abstract

Understanding knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of Texas agriscience teachers will help identify the needs for water-related curriculum and water-related research in the secondary educational setting. This study sought to answer the question is a workshop an effective tool in changing teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behaviors towards water-related research and water curriculum. A one day Water and the Agriscience Fair Workshop was conducted for Texas agriscience teachers that provided water-related teaching materials, highlighted the latest water-related research, and showed how water-related projects could be utilized in a classroom setting and in the FFA Agriscience Fair. Demographics were collected from the nine workshop participants. Workshop participants were assessed using the constructs of Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior and self efficacy immediately after participating in the workshop as well as six months after the workshop. It was concluded that the Water and the Agriscience Fair Workshop was an effective method of increasing workshop participants’ intentions to include water-related curriculum into their program because of the positive change in intentions six months after the workshop. Increased levels of self-efficacy among workshop participants were found immediately after and six months after the workshop. However, workshop participants’ intentions to encourage students to participate in the FFA Agriscience Fair with water-related projects had a negative change six months after the workshop. Attitudes also had a negative change six months after the workshop. It is recommended to replicate this study with a larger sample size and to increase the amount of time between data collections from six months to one year to determine if agriscience teachers followed their intentions through with related behaviors.

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Keywords

Agricultural science teachers, Agriscience teachers

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