The Importance of Selected Instructional Areas in the Present and Future Secondary Agricultural Education Curriculum as Perceived by Teachers, Principals, and Superintendents in Nebraska

The purpose of this study was to determine how agricultural education instructors and their administrators viewed the importance of the current and future instructional areas as part of the agricultural education curriculum in Nebraska. The population of the study included all agricultural teachers, principals, and superintendents of secondary schools in Nebraska which offered agricultural education during the 1989-1990 school year (n=381). A random sample of forty schools were selected from the population. The respondents were asked to rate the importance of topics in both the current and future agricultural education curriculum. No instructional topics were identified as either very important or of little importance in either the current or future Nebraska curriculum. Instructional topics identified by all groups as important in the current curriculum were agricultural economics and marketing and computer technology. In the future curriculum, all groups identified leadership and personal development, agricultural business management, natural resources and the environment, in addition to agricultural economics and marketing and computer technology. The findings of the study support the position that local educators take a cautious and low risk attitude toward educational reform. Of the three respondent groups, principals were the most inclined toward curriculum change. A description of the current state of instructional content in the agricultural education curriculum of secondary schools in Nebraska can best be described by paraphrasing the conclusion of Megatrends by Naisbitt (1982). "We are living in the time of the parenthesis, the time between eras. It is as though we have bracketed off the present from both the past and future. We have not quite left behind the past, but neither have we embraced the future. We have done the human thing. We are clinging to the known past in fear of the unknown future." In the National Research Council (NRC) report, Understanding Agriculture: New Directions for Education (1988), principle findings were that the focus and content of many vocational agriculture programs were outdated, and the subject matter of instruction about agriculture must be broadened. Additionally, the success of reform in vocational agriculture relies on innovative programmatic leadership at the state and national levels. During the same year as the release of the NRC report, a study conducted by Selection Research Incorporated (1988) reported that agricultural educators and business leaders in