Factors Contributing to Illinois School-Based Agriculture Teachers’ Final Decision to Leave the Classroom

Abstract

Teacher attrition is a significant problem nationally and a special challenge for school-based agriculture education programs. The purpose of this study was to investigate contributing variables associated with former Illinois school-based agriculture teachers and their decision to leave the profession. A four-factor conceptual model is proposed as a framework for explaining agriculture teacher retention or attrition and includes the multivariate constructs of Personal Factors, Working Conditions, Teacher Development, and Compensation. Demographic characteristics are explored as well as differences between novice and experienced teachers and their perceptions of attrition influences. This study is unique in that it reports survey data from teachers who have left the profession (n = 91) and explores their reflective perceptions about reasons for leaving. Among all teachers, Personal Factors and Teacher Development were found to have the most impact on decisions to leave the profession. Compensation was found to be a more significant attrition influence for novice teachers than for experienced teachers. Recommendations for organizations hoping to promote agriculture teacher retention are discussed.

Identifying Challenges Pre-service Teachers Encountered When Teaching Curriculum for Agricultural Science Education (CASE) Coursework during Student Teaching

“…The pre-service teachers in the present study cited lack of experience as a barrier to teaching CASE coursework, even after undergoing pre-service teacher-focused CASE training. Stressful and frustrating factors are commonplace for teachers (Solomonson, Korte, Thieman, Retallick, & Keating, 2018) and we question if some pre-service teachers were stressed about their student teaching experience in general and could have expressed any broader issues within their student teaching experiences during the CASE focus group sessions. As such, perhaps their challenges were not simply about teaching CASE coursework during their student teaching experiences but were about other things they experienced.…”

Identifying Teaching and Laboratory Instruction Concerns of Illinois Agriculture Teachers

“…The concerns that scored a mean above a 3.5 are similar to findings in past agricultural education research. Motivating students (Smalley et al, 2019;Clemons et al, 2018;Duncan et al, 2006;Solomonson et al, 2018;Sorensen et al, 2014;Stair et al, 2012;Figland et al, 2019), balancing personal and profession responsibilities (Myers et al, 2005;Solomonson et al, 2018;Solomonson et al, 2019;Sorensen et al, 2014;Stair et al, 2012;Touchstone, 2015) recruiting and retaining students (Myers et al, 2005, Touchstone, 2015and time management (Burke and Hillison 1991Myers et al, 2005;Smalley and Smith 2017;Sorensen et al, 2014;Touchstone, 2015) were the highest mean concerns in this study.…”

Potential Mentoring Impacts on Oklahoma Induction-Year School-Based Agricultural Education Teachers: A Modified Delphi Study

“…School-based agricultural education (SBAE) has experienced teacher shortages since the implementation of the Smith-Hughes Act in 1917 (Hillison, 1987;Solomonson et al, 2018). Recruitment programs, such as the National Association of Agricultural Educators' (NAAE) Teach Ag initiative, have been implemented to attract individuals to the profession (Ingram et al, 2018).…”

“…Research reports anywhere from 30% to 50% of teachers leave the classroom in the first five years (Blackburn et al, 2017). This history of high teacher turnover rates supports an ongoing SBAE teacher shortage (Solomonson et al, 2018). At the beginning of the 2018-2019 school year, 71 SBAE teaching positions remained unfilled and 45 SBAE programs closed their doors (Smith et al, 2019).…”

“…Still, mentoring programs can serve to increase teacher retention (Foor & Cano, 2012). Solomonson et al (2018) included teacher preparation and development as a contributing factor to the retention or attrition of a SBAE teacher. The induction-year requires the most intensive professional development of any career stage (Katz, 1972).…”