Little data exists to examine the stigmatized phenomenon of program mobility within agricultural education. Our research starts the conversation through interviews with eight School-Based Agricultural Education (SBAE) teachers across the United States, using qualitative phenomenology, to provide a unique perspective of retention through migration. We define teacher migration as a program move while choosing to remain in SBAE. Utilizing the theoretical lens of expansive learning through activity systems (Engeström, 2009), we present teacher migration as a means to learn and grow in the craft of teaching within SBAE, particularly among teachers with more than eight years of experience. Although additional efforts are needed to quantify migration within SBAE, and to examine the common narrative, our research reveals program migration to be a relational issue. In our study, participants expressed community, opportunity to learn, and time as functions of support through a career transition. They identified resources and expectations as challenges faced in the migration process. Our research provides a starting place for conversations around teacher migration through a focus on the assets of experience, viewing migration as a means of retention rather than as a function toward attrition.

This study sought to assess student perceptions of soft skills and career decision self-efficacy attained through participation in different types of Supervised Agriculture Experience programs within School Based Agricultural Education. There was no significant difference found in career decision self-efficacy or perceived soft skill attainment between those who participated in SAE and those who did not. This study identified a positive significant impact for career decision selfefficacy and perceived soft skill attainment between those who had placement and exploratory SAEs with the exception of the problem-solving construct. Findings suggest that students participating in programs that require greater investment of student time, skill, capital, and initiative develop greater perceived skill attainment and efficacy through the SAE program.

An increasing number of studies point to student gains from participation in leadership development opportunities. However, very little research exists to explore who has access to these experiences. In this paper, we investigate whether a student's employment off-campus has an impact on their ability to participate in, and experience gains in leadership efficacy from leadership training opportunities. We employ a linear regression path analysis to identify potential relationships between pre-college leadership efficacy, off-campus employment, participation in leadership training opportunities, and leadership efficacy for undergraduate students at a university in the Pacific Northwest. Pre-college leadership efficacy was the strongest predictor of leadership efficacy for undergraduate students, with hours of employment and leadership training having small, but significant, mediating effects. This begs the question: How do students build their leadership efficacy prior to entering post-secondary education and what drives students to continue to pursue experiences that develop their leadership efficacy?

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.

A teacher shortage continues to plague the SBAE profession. While this shortage has been quantified and explored from the perspective of individual teachers, little research has taken a systemic approach to the problem of the SBAE teacher shortage. We posit the teacher shortage problem as inextricably linked to a convoluted job description and growing list of competencies required to be a successful agriculture teacher. The teachers in this qualitative study shared their navigation of the process of reconciliation within their landscapes of practice and regimes of competence. Using hermeneutic phenomenology, themes of adjusting, rearranging, and appeasing emerged as the key ways in which SBAE teachers reconciled the competing demands of the profession. We discuss these findings specific to these participants, but also in terms of implications and recommendations for the broader profession, administrators, alumni groups, researchers, and teacher educators, noting especially the need for change at the professional level to reduce the reconciliation load on practicing SBAE teachers.