The Agriscience Curriculum in the Volunteer State

THEME ARTICLE The Volunteer State of Tennessee is where we began our career in agricultural education. The Tennessee agriculture students and teachers have been blessed with the presence of a specific “agriscience” course that blends biology, chemistry, and physics into agriculture. The teacher-designed and written curriculum efforts started in 1987 and by 1989, the state Board of Education, Tennessee Board of Regents, and the University of Tennessee Board of Trustees approved this course as an acceptable science credit for college entrance. We believe it to be one of the first such efforts in the country. The course consists of 33 units in six major sections, which are Orientation, Leadership, Experiential Learning, Animal Science, Plant Science, and Agricultural Mechanics. Each section contains units and specific objectives that must be taught if students are to receive science credit. Originally, the agricultural education teachers that teach the class must have teaching endorsements in both agricultural education and science, but recently Tennessee added a teaching endorsement in Agriscience, which makes teaching the course much more feasible. The agricultural curriculum has been a success for many reasons, but primarily because teachers have been working together to design, enhance, and maintain quality materials to use in their programs. Not only did they work together on the curriculum itself, they have also collaborated to develop a lab manual of science experiments that are within the context of specific areas of agriculture. Their most recent collaborative experience yielded over 100 science experiments for agriculture mechanics and physics, animal science, chemistry, genetics, plant science, soil science, and miscellaneous topics to be used in the agriscience curriculum and in other courses as needed. The point is that two heads are better than one and 50 to 100 heads are much better than that. You may not be able to organize an entire curriculum project, but you can take a leadership role and organize as many of the competent teachers that you know to capitalize on their knowledge, skills, abilities and experience to create a pool of scientific applications to be used that are relevant to your community and the specific type of agriculture that you teach. Following are some abbreviated examples of simple science implementation activities that the agriculture teachers in Tennessee were able to develop from their collaborative experiences. Try these in your class as soon as possible. They are a lot of fun. We challenge every agricultural education professional at all levels to form collaborative ventures that will give teachers more tools to use to incorporate science into the agricultural education curriculum.