Travis D. Park

Reading Strategy Instruction in Secondary Agricultural Science Courses: An Initial Perspective.

Students must be able to create meaning from career and technical education texts. Reading and comprehension of texts are skills that develop through practice with a variety of texts, including those in career and technical education. A quasiexperimental nonequivalent control group design was used to determine the effect of implementing content area reading strategies (CARS) on comprehension and reading behaviors of a purposively selected sample (n = 95) of secondary agricultural science students. Instruction with CARS was compared to the teacher’s normal instructional routine. Pretest score, grade level, grade point average, gender, ethnicity, and standardized reading level predicted 65% of variance in agriculture posttest scores. Students in the treatment group generally improved their reading behaviors, while students in the comparison group regressed. Students in the treatment group read significantly more hours per week for school and had increased the hours reading for pleasure significantly more than the comparison group.

Agricultural Science Teachers' Attitudes about and Use of Reading in Secondary Agricultural Science Instruction.

161 Abstract A national survey of 216 agriscience teachers investigated the attitudes and practices related to reading. Knowledge of strategies, total time of text use, confidence in strategy use, and the general approach to reading explained 67% of the variance in frequency of content area reading strategy use. Teachers held positive attitudes about reading from personal and instructional standpoints. However, they lacked knowledge and confidence in content area reading strategies, which translated into low frequency of strategy use. Teachers appeared to use reading and text with justifiable frequency in their agricultural science courses. Because knowledge of reading strategies explained such a large amount of variance (nearly 64%) in frequency of reading strategy use, career and technical education program administrators and teacher educators should encourage professional development about reading strategies.