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Abstract

There have been numerous claims that the negative perception of agriculture among secondary school students may be related to the students' lack of knowledge of the importance of agriculture and the lack of awareness of the range of career opportunities within this sector. The purpose of this study was to determine the knowledge and perception of secondary school students toward agriculture and to determine the influence of an agricultural promotion programme to broaden students' perception. In order to achieve this, a pre-test was administered among 3rd Form students in four randomly selected Secondary schools (n=100) in Trinidad and Tobago, to garner a sense of their knowledge and perception of agriculture, followed by an intervention which sought to inform them of the "New agriculture" and the various career paths in agriculture. A post-survey was done to determine changes in their perception of agriculture. Results show that the majority of students agreed that agriculture was very important but did not agree to make it a career choice. However, significant differences in perceived knowledge levels were found between the pre- and post- survey results; students perceived that most farmers are men and that farmers in Trinidad and Tobago make a lot of money. The authors suggest that future research should include a variety of agricultural knowledge assessment methods, procedures, and settings to better understand the role of increasing one's knowledge of agricultural facts and its possible effects on career decision making processes.

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