Exploring the Relationship Between Students Knowledge and Perception Towards Sustainable Agriculture

This study determines the relationship betweenstudents ' knowledge and thei r percept ions towardssustainable agric ulture. 100 senior agr icultura lstudents from 10 different majors at the unive rsi tyof tehran were se lected by simple randommethod. a 10-point sca le was used to measurestudents' perceptions and knowledge towardssustainable agriculture. the validity wasconfirmed by a panel of experts and the sca le wassubjec ted to reliabi lity testing using data collectedin the pilot study. the cronbach alpha coefficie ntswere 0.62 and 0.86 for the sca les of perceptionand knowledge, respectively. students ratedthemselves as a group having limited knowledgeof sustainable agr iculture policy but high for theiralti tudes, especially for environment andlivelih ood (sec urity food) . the findi ngs revealedthat altitude dimension of environment and foodsecurity, and the knowledge dimension of practic eand sustai nable agric ultura l systems hadspecifica lly a grea ter role in determin ingrelationship between students ' alt itudes and theirknowledge toward s sustainab le agric ulture.overa ll, to enhance students' alt itudes toward ssustai nable agriculture, it is sugges ted that moreattention be paid to the concepts of policydeterminat ion and familiarize students withsus tainab le agric ulture in agricultura l curriculumdevelopment.