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Identifying Standards and Benchmarks: A Vision for Pennsylvania Agricultural Education

NACTA Journal, Dec 2003 by Scanlon, Dennis, Radhakrishna, Rama, Hoover, Tracy

Dennis Scanlon, Rama Radhakrishna, and Tracy Hoover

Department of Agricultural and Extension Education

323 Agricultural Administration Building

The Pennsylvania State University

University Park, PA 16802

Email dcs@psu.edu

Email brr100@psu.edu

Email tsh102@psu.edu

Increasingly agricultural education as a profession is moving toward the integration of academic and vocational/technical information, collaborative learning arrangements, contextualized learning, accountability, and career academics in programs. Agricultural education for the 21st century must prepare a more diverse group of students for a workplace that values a broader range of skills. The driving force behind many school reform initiatives today is standards. Identifying appropriate standards and benchmarks is critical to the development of a standards-based curriculum. Such identification provides a justification for curricular changes in agricultural education programs. In June 2002, a survey was conducted to assess how agriculture teachers in Pennsylvania are teaching standards and benchmarks relative to nine content areas (animal science, biotechnology, food science, forestry, leadership and career development, natural resource management, plant and soil sciences, power and systems technology, and management, economics, and marketing). A total of 114 standards and 584 benchmarks were examined. Key findings from the survey, implications of findings for curricula changes/development, and inservice training will be shared. Findings from this study will be of value to teacher educators who are responsible for implementing standards based curriculum. Comparison of standards and benchmarks across states may also provide helpful insights to teacher educators.