Will the First Through Fifth Years Please Stand Up? Quantifying National SBAE Teacher Experience

Abstract

Research often references years of experience specific to participants, yet no compiled report exists for secondary school-based agricultural education (SBAE) to holistically quantify years of teaching experience. In addition, definitions accounting for experience fall short of capturing the myriad ways experience counts in the broader teaching profession. Our study addresses this missing piece of the teacher retention puzzle. Using Quiñones, Ford, and Teachout’s (1994) conceptual framework for work experience measures, our study quantified teacher experience in the National Association for Agricultural Education (NAAE). We analyzed National SBAE teacher experience through descriptive statistics, compared experience by region using an ANOVA model, and compared SBAE to the national teaching profession. We found practical significance in the difference between SBAE’s population of 1-3 year teachers and 10-19 year teachers compared to the national teacher average. We pose questions around teacher recruitment and retention relative to the specific experience demographic of SBAE and the generational trends accompanying such demographics.