Urban High School Students' Perceptions about Agricultural Careers and General Agricultural Knowledge

摘要

The Big City, Big Country Road Show (BC2BC) was a recruitment workshop for traditionally underrepresented inner-city high school students with little or no agricultural background. The workshop synthesized agricultural communications with activities emphasizing leadership, photography, writing, video production, and Web design to broaden students' perspectives of career opportunities in agriculture. The purpose of this study was to measure the influence of workshop participation on students' perceptions of careers attainable with an agricultural sciences degree and their general agricultural knowledge levels. Significantly more students perceived attainable agricultural careers, such as public relations officer, loan officer, account representative,Web designer, photographer, government official, and landscaper, after participating in the workshops. As workshop participants learned about the connections between agricultural subjects and careers, their perspectives about agricultural careers were changed. Significant differences in perceived knowledge levels were found; students perceived they knew less about agricultural subjects than did their peers after participating in the BC2BC workshops. Participants' pre- and post-workshop tested knowledgeof agricultural facts revealed no significant differences. Future research should include a variety of agricultural knowledge assessment methods, procedures, and settings to better understand the role of increasing one's knowledge of agricultural factsand its possible effects on career decision making processes.