Agriscience curriculum in Ohio agricultural education: Teacher utilization, attitudes, and knowledge

Science has always been a basic tenet of agricultural instruction in the United States (True, 1929). Agriculture by definition is an applied science that combines principles of the physical, chemical, and biological sciences in the process and production of food and fiber. As the curriculum of secondary agricultural education developed over the years, the content of the instruction emphasized more on the “how ” of agricultural production practices, rather than the “why ” (Williams, 1990). Changes in the content reflected changes in the technology of production agriculture, e.g., new, and more efficient ways of showing “how. ” The nature of the population involved directly in production agriculture in the United States changed drastically during the 20th century. By the mid-1980s, the percentage of the United States population who lived on farms was 2.2 % (Nationa