The purpose of this study was to examine university recreation center (URC) leaders' perceptions of their URC climate and the strategies used to promote body size diversity. The study's secondary goal was to explore the URC leaders' plans and professional development needs to further promote body size diversity and inclusion in their URCs. 141 URC…

Attrition is a documented cause for ongoing SBAE teacher shortages and is often linked with the number of challenges faced by teachers and their ability to overcome them. Teacher experiences with challenges and barriers has the potential to impact occupational self-efficacy, or their perceived ability to do their job. Lower occupational…

This study was designed to explore the relationship between teacher practices and levels of student engagement in secondary agricultural education programs. Most researchers have agreed that student engagement at the secondary level may be measured through three constructs: cognitive engagement, behavioral engagement, and emotional engagement. The…

The purpose of this study was to identify the perception of students enrolled in an initial early field experience (EFE) in relation to the components of the agricultural education model. The students enrolled in the initial field experience were freshmen and sophomore students. The initial field experience course consisted of four face-to-face…

The overall purpose of this study was to explore the identified language challenges and supports for writing in Standard Australian English for secondary English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) students. An initial review of the academic literature revealed that this research topic has not been extensively researched in the Australian…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role textbooks can play on writing complexity and lexical density as a proxy for critical thinking and ultimately learning, in relation to argumentative and summative writing when integrated with a virtual reality experience. In this study, differences in writing complexity and lexical density…

Due to the lack of qualified agricultural education teachers needed to fill yearly vacancies on the secondary school level, educators at Texas Tech University conducted a longitudinal study concerning how student teachers spend their time during their student teaching experience in an attempt to identify if this time spent has an impact on the…

Although the concept of quality has been an essential part of the higher education sector, the global quest for Quality Assessment (QA hereafter) has raised attention to quality to a new level. Van Vught and Westerheijden (1994) argue that the common charateristics of QA policy include: meta-level organization to conduct external evaluation,…

This paper furthers the understanding of literacy being developed through this Special Issue by bringing a pluralistic, complex account of literacy into conversation with assessment. The rise of neoliberalism in education--and its related focus on standards, accountability, and efficiency--has seen literacy positioned as the "core…

A quality program is the ultimate goal for many secondary agricultural education programs. To ensure quality agricultural education programs, standards were established to measure the extent agricultural education programs in Iowa were implementing standards. Utilizing Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behavior, researchers incorporated the Iowa Council…

The transmission and dissemination of knowledge in Aboriginal societies for the most part occurs orally in an Aboriginal language or in Aboriginal English. However, whilst support is given to speaking skills in Indigenous communities, in our education system less emphasis is given to developing equivalent oral communicative competence in Standard…

Exploring the challenges faced by agriculture teachers during the Spring 2020 semester brings to light the reality of teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, understanding the challenges faced by teachers empowers the profession to make agricultural education more resilient to broader, social forces in the future. In this study, a national…

According to the national survey of science education, science educators in the USA currently face many challenges such as lack of qualified secondary Earth and Space Science (ESS) teachers. Less qualified teachers may have difficulty teaching ESS because of a lack of conceptual understanding, which leads to diminished confidence in content…

The purpose of this study was to investigate student perceptions toward factors influencing Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) participation. This descriptive study was conducted in 120 randomly selected agricultural education programs throughout four purposively selected states representative of the National FFA regions. Within each state…

In a state facing broad budget shortfalls, agricultural education programs have to show their value in relation to other key subject areas, such as math and reading. The best agricultural education programs follow a three-component model of instruction, including classroom experience, leadership development through FFA involvement, and an…