This study utilized a case study design to explore how early career agriculture teachers in Oregon conceptualize success and work-life balance in school-based agricultural education. Wenger's (1998) theory of Communities of Practice, precisely the concept of reification, served as the framework for our study. Our population included 52 agriculture teachers who attended an early career teacher workshop and participated in a seminar on work-life balance. Overall, participants grappled with several tensions regarding notions of success, work-life balance, and the interactions between the two. Findings concluded "success" has been reified to equate the number of awards won, active FFA members, or money earned and, one can be a successful agriculture teacher, a balanced agriculture teacher, but never both. As agriculture teachers strive for success and balance, they encounter emotions of guilt, judgment, fear, and pressure. While participants acknowledged the tensions that exist between notions of success and notions of balance, any progress on achieving such balance is done in vain as no examples of balanced agriculture teachers exist, and messages about success and work-life balance are paradoxical and unsubstantiated. While this study focused on one state, it provides valuable insight into how agriculture teachers are defining and thinking about success.

No abstract

Alternative certification is often seen by policymakers and local school districts as the answer to the teacher shortage problem. Yet, little is known about the experiences of alternatively certified teachers in agricultural education. This case study sought to explore the experiences of alternatively certified agriculture teachers through a composite case study grounded in Dewey’s conception of experience. The participants for this study included four early career alternatively certified teachers in Wisconsin. Our findings illuminate insights regarding the fortuitous nature of alternatively certified teachers entering the classroom, the importance of their prior experiences, their passion for the content, the hurdles of becoming certified, and the significance of support. This is the first study of its kind in agricultural education to examine the first-hand accounts of alternatively certified teachers in an attempt to understand the benefits and challenges and the stepping stones leading to alternative certification. How are alternatively certified teachers becoming certified? What personal and professional experiences are they utilizing in the agricultural education classroom? It is critical that we do not disregard these teachers or their valuable experience, but instead seek to understand their background and certification process to ensure continued school-based agricultural education success.

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.