Teacher recruitment and retention in the United States has been deemed an issue across all disciplines and grade-levels. School-based agricultural education (SBAE) is no exception to this issue, where for decades a national shortage of qualified agriculture teachers has persisted. According to the 2021 Illinois Agricultural Education Annual…

Fundamentally, agricultural teacher education programs and their faculty are tasked with preparing competent teachers capable of teaching students enrolled in public schools. As part of their design, an important facet of these programs is ensuring pre-service teachers are ready to provide educational opportunities in aspects of school-based…

Recruitment and retention of agriculture teachers is a major concern in the field of school-based agricultural education (SBAE). A major reason cited for this concern is perceived shortcomings in teacher compensation. To remedy this factor, Illinois implemented an extended contract grant program to provide agriculture teachers with additional…

Agricultural educators can have a profound impact on student's lives and are often aware of their students' life experiences outside of the classroom. Students often treat their agricultural educator as a mentor, which increases their likeliness of confiding in them when facing hardships, such as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). An ACE is…

The purpose of this grounded theory qualitative research was to identify the influences on students' decisions to pursue a career as a high school agriculture teacher and develop a proposed theoretical model to conceptualize this career decision. Two samples of students -- one sample of high school students and one sample of college students --…

The shortage of school-based agricultural education (SBAE) teachers in the United States has been a chronic issue for decades. Besides not having sufficient graduates in our teacher preparation programs, the number of SBAE teachers annually leaving the profession further exacerbates the problem. While the reasons why SBAE teachers leave the…

The global COVID-19 pandemic caused immediate and intense changes throughout education, including a reliance on remote instruction. For school-based agricultural education (SBAE) teachers, who rely on experiential and hands-on learning, the changes brought about by COVID-19 required a dramatic pivot in their work responsibilities. The changing…