Infusion of Environmental Education in Wisconsin Agriculture/Agriscience Curriculum

Abstract

The educational realm of agriculture/agriscience education in the state of Wisconsin varies greatly amongst school districts. Instructors are not provided a set curriculum that they need to follow but instead are offered guidelines, standards, and resources to help build their program and curriculum to their individual desires and needs. In addition, environmental education infused into each school district’s curriculum typically varies based on the instructor’s EE knowledge, experiences, and professional development. There are 294 instructors teaching agriculture/agriscience in the 2009-2010 school year in the state of Wisconsin, with the majority of school districts having one agriculture/agriscience instructor at the high school level. This research uses formative assessment to specifically determine how the instructors are infusing EE in their programs, and which barriers now exist in preventing increased implementation of EE concepts. This research adds to the field of EE by evaluating infusion of EE in Wisconsin agriculture/agriscience programs, utilizing a web-based survey instrument design, and focusing on the needs of the educators who use EE curriculum. Results of this research indicate that Agriculture/Agriscience Instructors are infusing EE into their current curriculum at varying levels depending on the instructor. Based on surveys, the main reason instructors are not incorporating more EE resources in their classrooms was because they felt that they did not have the knowledge or training necessary to use these resources. Hence, a workshop was created and offered at the Wisconsin Association of Agricultural Educators (WAAE) annual conference to help address this concern. Pre-surveys and post-surveys indicated that the thirty instructors attending the workshop improved their knowledge of EE resources for their classroom which ideally will be transferred to their EE efforts in their classroom curriculum this year.