Abstract:
Cooperative work experience in agricultural education is one
form of supervised occupational experience that provides the student
in agriculture with practical application of skills and knowledge in
one of the many agricultural occupations. Cooperative work experience
students are placed with employers in agribusiness service,
processing, or in distribution for work experience consistent with
their occupational goals.
The purpose of this study was to determine the program structure,
program involvement, program planning, and use of available
resources of agricultural cooperative work experience programs in
Oregon high schools by assessing the existing agricultural cooperative
work experience programs.
Data collected for this study were obtained by sending
questionnaires to all ninety Oregon high schools identified as having
reimbursable agricultural programs. Completed questionnaires were
received from 65 or 72.2 percent of the schools and 41 or 63.1 percent
of those schools reported having an agricultural cooperative work
experience program.
The study revealed that 19 or 46.3 percent of the schools with
cooperative work experience programs in agriculture have a plan for
selecting their cooperative work experience students. It was also
revealed that 23 or 56.1 percent of the schools were using a. planned
method of selecting cooperative work experience stations less than 50
percent of the time.
Agricultural advisory committees were involved in publicizing
and promoting the program in 27 or 65.9 percent of the schools, program
evaluation in 26 or 63.4 percent of the schools, and developing
and locating cooperative work experience stations in 28 or 68.3 percent
of the schools. It was found that 36 or 87.8 percent of the
schools have training agreements on each of their cooperative work
experience students.
Those schools with agricultural cooperative work experience
programs indicated that their supervising teachers were spending
an average of 3.0 hours per week making an average of 2.8 work
experience visits per week during the school year. During the summer they were spending an average of 5.8 hours per week making
an average of 6.6 visits per week.
Training plans listing the students learning activities were
developed for an average of 68.8 percent of the students involved in
cooperative work experience.
It was found that 36 or 87.8 percent of the schools maintain a
cooperative work experience file on each cooperative work experience
student that included a record of student progress made after each
cooperative work experience visit.
A listing of nine recommendations were included.
