A comparative descriptive study of Michigan agriscience students' attitudes toward internationalizing agricultural education programs

The researcher identified two groups for a comparative descriptive study of students' attitudes toward internationalizing agricultural education programs (IAEP) in Michigan. Students whose agriscience teachers had participated in an IAEP curriculum-development/inservice project made up one group, and students whose agriscience teachers had not participated in the IAEP project made up the other group. Agriscience teachers from both groups were randomly selected to participate in the study. The researcher surveyed 393 juniors and seniors in 17 agricultural education programs in Michigan secondary schools using a questionnaire developed specifically for the study. The three-part survey contained items designed to measure students' attitudes and beliefs about internationalizing agricultural education programs (IAEP), concepts related to global/international agriculture, and demographic information. Survey reliability was.96 for Part I and.83 for Part II. The response rate was 78%.;Major study findings were that students (a) responded positively toward IAEP, (b) expressed preferences for methods of learning about IAEP, and (c) thought they should receive more instruction on IAEP in their coursework.;Using SPSS/PC+, the researcher ran descriptive statistics on all 85 survey items, establishing group mean scores for each item in Parts I and II of the survey, and frequencies for student demographics. Combined descriptive analyses were run on items grouped according to topics or themes, establishing mean scores for each topic/theme. T-tests were run to determine possible differences between students whose instructors had or had not participated in the IAEP curriculum-development/inservice project. Multiple regressions and t-tests were run to determine possible relationships between student demographics and responses.