Entry–level Technical Skills that Agricultural Industry Experts Expected Students to Learn through Their Supervised Agricultural Experiences: A Modified Delphi Study

Abstract

Education, called on secondary agricultural education to shift its scope and purpose, including students' supervised agricultural experiences (SAEs). The NRC asserted that this shift should create opportunities for students to acquire supervised experience in land laboratories, agricultural mechanics laboratories, greenhouses, nurseries, and other facilities provided by schools. For example, the agricultural industry offers 52,000 job opportunities annually, including sales and marketing, specialty veterinary medicine, food safety/biosecurity, forest ecosystem management, precision agriculture, biomaterials engineering, landscape horticulture, plant and animal genetics, specialty crops production and nutrition services (Goecker, Gilmore, Smith, & Smith, 2005). Students' SAEs should reflect such aspects of the industry. Using a modified Delphi technique, this study identified the perceptions of agricultural industry experts on the role of SAE in facilitating students learning technical skills needed for entry-level employment. The experts expected that students would learn more entry-level technical skills associated with the career pathways of Animal Science and Agricultural Communications (44 of 60) than the other five pathways combined as a result of their participation in SAEs. This paper explores rationale regarding why it is important to address this "imbalance" and makes recommendations about that.

Does Prior Experience in Secondary Agricultural Mechanics Affect Pre-service Agricultural Education Teachers' Intentions to Enroll in Post-secondary Agricultural Mechanics Coursework?

“…This study aligns with the American Association for Agricultural Education's National Research Agenda (Doerfert, 2011) Research Priority Area 3: Sufficient Scientific and Professional Workforce That Addresses the Challenges of the 21st Century. As agricultural education students and the agricultural industry desire basic education in the principles of agricultural mechanics (Ramsey & Edwards, 2011), agricultural education teachers are primarily responsible for providing the training in the content area. Training in a technologically-rich field, such as agricultural mechanics, can help to prepare secondary students for the rigors, needs, and challenges of the real world (Doerfert, 2011).…”

“…In turn this could compromise the receipt of valuable instructional time in the content area. Despite the decline in required post-secondary agricultural mechanics coursework (Hubert & Leising, 2000), it is imperative that agricultural education teachers still maintain competence in the content area (Saucier et al, 2012) to meet the needs of stakeholders (Ramsey & Edwards, 2011).…”

Agricultural Teacher Perceptions of School Components as Motivational Factors to Continue Teaching and Demotivational Factors to Discontinue Teaching

“…Furthermore, the researchers elected to implement the modified designed solely to improve initial round response rates and provide solid grounding for the previous and future work of similar research (Custer, Scarella, & Stewart, 1999). Finally, the Delphi technique has been used and is widely accepted in agricultural education research (Ramsey & Edwards, 2011).…”

A Delphi Approach to the Preparation of Early– Career Agricultural Educators in the Curriculum Area of Agricultural Mechanics: Fully Qualified and Highly Motivated or Status Quo?

“…The Delphi technique is a "group process technique for eliciting, collating, and generally directing informed judgment towards a consensus on a particular topic" (Delp, Thesen, Motiwalla & Seshadri 1977, p. 168). Additionally, the Delphi technique is a widely accepted method for achieving convergence of opinion concerning real-world knowledge solicited from experts in various areas (Hsu & Sandford, 2007;Ramsey & Edwards, 2010. ) Stitt-Gohdes and Crews (2004) noted that the purpose of the Delphi technique is used to gather responses from an expert panel or panels, and combine the responses into one useful statement.…”