Agriscience Teachers’ Concern Profiles for Content Area Reading Strategies

Abstract

Although students today will need to rely on text more than in the past, American students are struggling to read and comprehend text. Research has supported the ability of content area reading strategies (CARS) to increase students’ ability to read and comprehend text. The purpose of this research was to assess agriscience educators’ implementation of CARS in their classrooms. A descriptive, census survey of 371 Florida agriscience teachers was completed using a tailored–design, web–based questionnaire. Overall, agriscience teachers’ Stages of Concern profiles were non–user profiles. The researchers concluded CARS professional development programs are not meeting the needs of agriscience teachers; thus, these teachers are not progressing through the Stages of Concern and are not implementing CARS at a high level. Research should be completed to develop an Innovation Configuration which would provide a more unified vision for CARS implementation. Practitioners should develop and provide a consistent, in–depth professional development program to provide ongoing training and support of the innovation throughout a several year process.