Agricultural Technical Skills Needed by Entry Level Agriculture Teachers: A Modified Delphi Study

Abstract

Many students currently in preservice agricultural education teacher education programs do not have traditional agricultural backgrounds. Many of those students are experiencing skills they will be required to teach or utilize upon employment for the first and sometimes only time in introductory course work within their teacher education programs. This study utilized an expert panel from within the Southern Region of the AAAE composed of teacher educators, teachers that have taught for more than five years (veteran teachers), and teachers with less than three years’ experience (new teachers) in a modified Delphi technique to develop a consensus list of technical agricultural skills that preservice agricultural teachers should possess prior to their first teaching job. Beginning agricultural education teacher skills were declared across seven categories. The agricultural mechanics category had the most (31 skills), followed by horticulture (24 skills), and animal science (14 skills). The remaining skills fell in the categories of business/program management (8 skills), natural resources/soils (5 skills), food safety/food science (5 skills), and safety (4 skills). An emergent finding showed differences in opinions between new teachers, veteran teachers, and teacher educators in how many skills new teachers should possess.