The Influence of School-Based Agricultural Educationon Preservice Agriculture Teachers’ Choice to Teach

摘要

Nationwide, agricultural education has experienced a shortage of qualified school-basedagriculture teachers for over four decades. Students who seek careers as agriculture teachers areoften those who participated in agricultural education and FFA in high school. The Ag Ed FITChoiceModel (Lawver 2009; Lawver & Torres, 2012) was used as the investigative frameworkfor this phenomenological study, which sought to explore how active participation in school-basedagricultural education programs influenced students’ choice to major in agricultural educationand pursue a career in teaching. Seven agricultural education majors who participated inagricultural education and FFA in high school participated in a focus group interview. Transcriptsof the focus group interview were analyzed and coded for thematic content using open, axial, andselective coding protocols. Five themes emerged from the data, which included, 1) socializerinfluencers, 2) social value 3) passion for agriculture, 4) alignment with personal values, and 5)agricultural education factors. The agricultural education factors theme was broken into four subthemes,which include agriculture teacher encouragement, FFA events, increased self-efficacythrough a quality program, and post-high school opportunities. Based on the findings, implicationsand recommendations for recruitment are discussed.