CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the study
Career is the sequence of occupation, job or position occupied
by a person during his entire life (Janick 1994). Therefore, it is an
accepted fact that one should choose and prepare for a carer ealy
enough in life. Hence, Secondary school agricultural students need
to be exposed to career opportunities in agriculture.
Agriculture according to Egbe (2004) is an art, a science, a
business, profession, occupation and industry for production of
food and fibre for man’s use. It is very extensive in scope and has
many career opportunities. Egbe (2004) listed the careers open for
students of agriculture in the areas of (i) Selfreliance
in production
of various crops, fishery, poultry, pigery, rabitary, or distribution of
farm produce. (ii) Civil service work in Ministry of Agriculture,
National Directorate of Employment, Agricultural agencies e.t.c. (iii)
Research Stations (iv) Agroallied
industries like detergents,
processing, supplies, textiles, feed meals e.t.c.
The choice of any of these careers may be influenced by
certain factors. Okorie (2000) said that factors that limit choice of
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occupation are the things that prevent individuals from entering
into the occupation. He stresses further that those factors as the
nature of preparation, job remunerations, returns to the
occupations, motivation and incentives, technicality involved in
the occupation and the status of the job. In a similar manner, Eze
(2004) enumerated factors that limit students choice of agricultural
occupations as the level of exposure to carer occupations, quality of
teaching agriculture, returns to agriculture projects, availability of
inputs for agricultural enterprise, and public image of agricultural
occupations. In this study, factors that affect choice of agricultural
career by secondary school students refer to cause of poor
retention of graduates in agric jobs.
Skill, according to Hull (1992), was defined as manual dexterity
acquired through the repetitive performance of an operation.
According to Hornby (1980), skills involve the ability to do
something expertly well. Aderogba (2011) expressed skills as the
possession of expertise needed to perform a particular job or tasks
and in essence, it ought to consist of habit that ensures adaptation.
Olaitan (2010) posits that although students might have studied
Mathematics in school as a subject, teachers of Agricultural
Science or Agricultural Education should not overlook the teaching
of the application of Mathematics to Agriculture. According to him,
Mathematics is very important in calculating the area of the school
farm, yield of crop per hectare, profit or loss accruing from farm
enterprise, amount of feed needed per head of animal per unit body
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weight gain, amount of work done by tractor to ascertain efficiency,
the bulk density of soil, soil PH, soil analysis experiments and rate
of fertilizer application among others.
It has been observed by the researchers that those who do not
posses basic skills in Farm Mathematics are usually disadvantaged
in solving farm problems or carrying out some farm activities
successfully. In which case, lack of effective technical skill in
Mathematical calculations had been noted by Gliem and Warmdrod
(1985) as being significant in creating problems on a long run,
whenever a student of Agriculture is selecting and preparing for a
life long career after graduating from school and colleges in Nigeria.
Popoola (2013) remarks that if student's studying Mathematics are
not adequately prepared in basic skills development, they may
experience difficulty in finding employment and in later
performance on the job. The ability to compute well are therefore
regarded as very critical to subsequent learning and employability
of a student entering the labour market.
It has been observed by Burton, Daane, and Giesen (2008) that
teachers of Mathematics have little knowledge and understanding
of school Mathematics than is required for the task they face in the
classroom. According to them, many teachers of Mathematics in
many countries have less than the required knowledge of the
content of Mathematics they teach. These conditions can probably
be informed by the extent of the relevance and mastery of the
content of the curriculum which the teachers were exposed to
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during their training. In the same context, if the Agricultural
Science curricular in the training departments, schools or colleges
were full of topics in Farm Mathematics and the teachers were able
to master the topics, perhaps they would be able to display high
level of competency and preparation in the mastery of
computational skills in Farm Mathematics contents (Popoola,
2013). A teacher cannot teach more than what he/she knows or
had been exposed to.
Learners generally are expected to engage some activities in the
school before learning can take place. The learning can takes place
is the result of students teachers
reaction and their environment.
For a successful achievement of educational objectives and
enhanced learning outcome, contents or subject matters to be
learnt must be carefully selected to meet student individual
deference's through learning by doing. Students background
knowledge is also very essential when they are computing or
learning new concepts. The prior knowledge of both the student
and teacher can help them to understand new lesson especially
when they are activated and they serve as prerequisite
information. Popoola (2013), noted that professional teacher should
give adequate attention to the prior knowledge of the students most
especially when dealing with computations exercise.
Teachers of Agricultural Science are exported to link the theory
in the classroom with practicals and computational problem solving
content of the curriculum for a worthwhile learning outcome, and
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effective transfer of learning experience. It has been observe that
teachers experience plays a big role in the effectiveness of every
teaching and learning process. Teachers with more years of
experience had been observed to be able to teach more effectively
than the beginning teachers, Whitelaw et al (2000) states that
teachers sex is an important variable related to pupils performance.
Gender traits in boys and girls have shown in their attitude towards
Agricultural Science. There is a bias that majority of females still
choose not to opt for Agricultural science. The differences in the
persistence of males and females studying Agricultural Science
have been a topic of concern to researchers in Agricultural Science
Education for years. Similarly, it has been observed that male
teacher have more positive attitude towards the teaching of
Agricultural Science, achieve better and have higher preferences for
Agricultural practicals and Mathematical problem solving in
Agriculture than female teachers. Gender in this case is the
behavioural, cultural or psychological traits associated with ones
sex.
Defining the major roles of the teachers of Agriculture in schools
and college, Olaitan (2011) posited that a teacher of Agriculture is
not only a "common teacher" but also a technician in Agriculture.
According to him, the roles of a teacher of Agricultural Science
differ to some extent from that of the other teachers in the school
system because they are expected to deal with cognitive,
psychomotor and affective outcomes of teaching learning process.
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The teacher of Agricultural Science is often looked upon as a
master of definite skills in mathematical and problem solving skill.
This means therefore, that the teacher of Agricultural Science are
supposed to give all round education to their students as well as
helping them to acquire definite skills that are necessary for
efficient performance in all aspects of agriculture where the learner
may wish to specialize.
Statement of the Problem
It has been generally observed that the number of secondary school
graduates taking agriculture as a career is low as majority of
farmers in the study area are adult farmers. There must be some
variables which are responsible for the low choice of agriculture as
a carer by secondary school graduates. These variables or factors
have not been determined in the study area because there is no
record on the causes of low choice of agriculture as a career. As the
factors militating choice of agriculture as a career are not
determined. It is very difficult for the teachers and stakeholders of
agriculture education programme to improve the teaching of
agriculture so that graduates of the course can choose it as a
career. If this problem is allowed to continue, it will adversely
reduce the workforce and agricultural productivity. It is therefore
necessary to determine factors affecting choice of agriculture as a
career by secondary school graduates for the purpose of improving.