The purpose of this descriptive-correlational study was to assess the level of teacher self-efficacy of first-year, secondary agricultural education teachers in Oklahoma at the beginning and end of their entry-year in the profession and describe their early career retention. This study found that these first-year teachers increased their level of…

Mentoring and induction programs are popular within the public school system in the United States. Additionally, content-based mentoring programs exist, such as those within agricultural education. A number of studies yielded results that showed a relationship between mentoring/induction participation and teacher retention. The importance of the…

The academic skills of today's teenagers are diminishing, and are a cause for concern. One of the academic areas in need of improvement is science. The purpose of this causal comparative study was to determine the effect that a science-enhanced, curriculum would have on students' achievement in science. The population for this study consisted of…

The purpose of this study was to identify and describe factors that influence senior agricultural education students' choice to become a secondary agricultural education teacher. The study focused on the extent to which students' beliefs and attitude about teaching influenced their intent to select teaching secondary agricultural education as a…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of inquiry-based agriscience instruction on student argumentation skills. Argumentation is defined as the student's ability to establish a claim, provide a rationale for steps taken, provide and justify data, recognize alternate conclusions, and provide evidence why the conclusion is correct or…

Modern adolescents are faced with a variety of choices regarding how to spend their free time. As recruitment and increased student participation continues to be a major priority of the National FFA Organization, it is essential to explore the reasons why students make the choice to become or not to become a member of FFA. This study was a part of…

The purpose of this study was to develop a substantive theory for community development by school-based agriculture programs through grounded theory methodology. Data for the study included in-depth interviews and field observations from three school-based agriculture programs in three non-metropolitan counties across a Midwestern state. The…

For more than 20 years, the 50 agricultural mechanics laboratory management competencies identified by Johnson and Schumacher in 1989 have served as the basis for numerous needs assessments of secondary agriculture teachers. This study reevaluated Johnson and Schumacher's instrument, as modified by Saucier, Schumacher, Funkenbusch, Terry, and…

Teacher educators have the task of identifying skills most needed by pre-service teachers and in-service teachers. The purpose of this study was to describe teacher concerns over different stages of teacher development. A three-part instrument consisting of a teacher concerns statement, a Likert-type scale of concerns and demographic data was…

Minimum passing scores for the Gearing Up for Safety: Production Agriculture Safety Training for Youth curriculum (Gearing Up for Safety) were set in 2006 with widely used and established procedures by efforts of subject matter experts (French, Breidenbach et al., 2007; French, Field, and Tormoehlen, 2006, 2007). While providing a research-based…

Agricultural education teachers' attitudes about the perceptions of diversity inclusion in their programs are variables that may have a strong influence on the number of students that enroll in agricultural education. This study examines the effect of teachers' demographic and personal characteristics on their perceptions of the benefits of…

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of North Carolina high school agricultural educators toward including students with special needs when implementing Supervised Agricultural Experience and participating in FFA activities. The population was all high school agricultural educators in North Carolina with 12 month employment (N…

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…

The purpose of this study was to investigate student Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) knowledge and participation. This descriptive study was conducted in 120 randomly selected agricultural education programs throughout four purposively selected states representative of the National FFA regions. Students completed a questionnaire assessing…

A quasi-experimental pilot study of curriculum re-design using Learning Objects (LO) to instruct agricultural education students with Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) was conducted in five high schools in the federally designated economically distressed area, the Illinois Delta Region. Six LOs were developed based on a unit of instruction in…