Exploring Teacher Motivations and Challenges in Incorporating Agricultural Content into Elementary Grade Curricula

This study explores what motivates elementary school teachers to integrate agriculture into their curriculum and instruction. Additionally, it discusses the barriers teachers face to integration and what agricultural organizations can do to assist teachers. This mixed-methods study began with an online survey of teachers who had previously attended an Illinois Ag in the Classroom training. From the survey responses, interview questions were created to further understand the collected survey responses and learn more about the teachers’ motivations. A portion of the respondents participated in virtual interviews. Our study found that teachers are motivated to teach agriculture because they feel a responsibility to educate students about where their food comes from, their instruction connects to agriculture, and agriculture is important to their community. Despite teachers understanding the importance of this subject, they face challenges such as time, curriculum restrictions, lack of resources, and lack of knowledge when teaching agriculture. Teachers asked for more resources and connections to agricultural professionals to combat this. Findings from this study match many previous findings related to agricultural literacy, adding that teachers desired more contact with agriculture in their own communities to create connections in their lessons.