Iowa teachers' perceptions regarding the effectiveness of agriculture teacher education programs in addressing teaching standards and criteria

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore and describe perceptions of secondary school-level teachers of agriculture in Iowa regarding the effectiveness of agricultural education teacher preparation programs in addressing education licensure standards and criteria, and subject content in agriculture during teacher preparation. Standards have been introduced in education to serve as guiding principles for the content and procedures in preparing teachers.;Formalized standards-based education has been in place since 2001, yet little is known about teacher perceptions regarding standards, particularly in agricultural education. This research study was descriptive, and used quantitative and qualitative data. An online questionnaire was used to survey a census of 96 agriculture teachers who started teaching between 1995 and 2006 in secondary schools in the state of Iowa. Usable data for this study was 62. Teachers perceived agricultural education programs to be generally effective in addressing standards and moderately effective in addressing criteria and the agriculture science subject content. It was also found that teachers perceived standards, criteria, and subject content addressed during preparation to be very important in their teaching profession. The professional development activities teachers attend during teaching were perceived to be moderately influential to their professional development.;There was no statistically significant difference between the group of teachers who started teaching before and those who started teaching after standards were introduced on perceived effectiveness, importance, and influence of professional development. Female teachers perceived professional development activities to be more beneficial for their teaching compared to male teachers. The Pearson correlations revealed both positive and negative negligible to low relationships between teachers' experience and the three concepts, and also with the final GPA scores. Cramers' V indicated a substantial relationship between teachers who trained at other universities and the teaching of agricultural mechanics.;It was recommended that there is a need for more course work in agricultural mechanics at ISU. Further research should be conducted to identify additional standards related to agricultural education and on how standards were implemented. Professional development workshops should be conducted to provide content in agriculture alongside with a module on how to teach it.