Effect of a supervised occupational experience instructional packet on vocational agriculture student economic involvement in agriculture

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the long-term effect of a supervised occupational experience (SOE) instructional packet on students\u27 economic worth, and study the relationship between teacher stability and students\u27 economic worth. A post-test control group was used in the investigation. The experimental treatment was an instructional packet designed for use by vocational agriculture teachers to help beginning students select and plan individual SOE programs. In-service education was provided for teachers of the experimental treatment group. Teachers of the control treatment group taught their normal instructional units on SOE and were not provided in-service education;An Involvement in Agriculture Inventory developed by the researcher, was used to collect data for the study. It was administered to 236 third-year vocational agriculture students from 32 randomly assigned schools. The statistical procedures used to analyze the data were as follows: Frequencies, Chi-square, Analysis of Variance and ONE WAY ANOVA;Major findings of the study were: (1) Over one-half of the students planned to enter occupations in production agriculture; (2) swine enterprises were owned by more than half of the participants in the market livestock category; (3) thirty-five percent of the sample had ownership SOE in harvested crop; (4) no significant differences were found between the experimental and control groups with regard to breeding livestock, market livestock, crops harvested, hours paid labor and net worth; (5) a significant relationship was found between value of harvested crops and teacher stability; (6) interaction existed between the use of the SOE instructional packet and teacher stability and the value of market livestock