Preservice Agriculture Teachers' Perceived Level of Readiness in an Agricultural Mechanics Course

Abstract

This longitudinal trend study sought to compare the perceptions of preservice agricultural education teachers, enrolled in a Metals and Welding course at a land grant university, on their welding related skills at the beginning of the semester to their final course grade at the end of the semester. Preservice agriculture teachers (N = 240) who completed the course between the Fall 2006 and Spring 2012 semesters served as the population for the study. Although the course is designed, specifically, to facilitate learning in metal fabrication, not one preservice teacher in any semester perceived an excellent ability in performing the welding related skills. However, skills related to shielded metal arc welding and gas metal arc welding were rated higher than those related to gas tungsten arc welding or oxyacetylene welding. The course instructor should be made aware of this discrepancy and encourage students to seek additional experiences in metals and welding. Further, the course instructor should continue to collect these data at the beginning and end of the course to determine the impact these changes have on students' ability to perform and teach the skills as future instructors. Similar studies should be conducted in other areas of agricultural mechanics, such as small gasoline engines, plumbing, and agricultural structures.

Concerns of Female Preservice Teachers in Teaching and Supervising the Agricultural Mechanics Laboratory

“…Agricultural mechanics knowledge issues are compounded by a lack of adequate training, professional development, and instructional materials in agricultural safety (Rudolphi & Retallick, 2015). Specifically, agricultural programs have reduced the amount of training received in courses specific to agricultural mechanics (Burris et al, 2005;Schumacher, Ess, Strickland, & King, 2002), and teachers across multiple geographic regions and teaching experience levels have reported a need for professional development related to agricultural mechanics (Blackburn, Robinson, & Field, 2015;Duncan, Ricketts, Peake, & Uesseler, 2006;Stripling et al, 2014). Among the many professional development needs of agricultural mechanics teachers, safety instruction and supervision is a top concern while in the agricultural mechanics laboratory (Gliem & Miller, 1993;Johnson & Schumacher, 1988;Langley & Kitchel, 2013;Swan, 1992).…”

“…Females comprise about half of recent student teaching populations (Burris et al, 2010;. Specific to agricultural mechanics preservice preparation, Blackburn et al (2015) reported one-third of the students enrolled in a preservice agricultural mechanics course from 2006 to 2012 were female.…”

Beginning SBAE Teachers’ Metal Fabrication Knowledge Needs: Implications for Teacher Preparation

“…Instruction in metal fabrication requires technical and administrative procedures, tools, equipment, laboratory arrangement, consumable materials, and quality assurance (Yakubu, 2014). To ensure SBAE teachers are technically competent, teacher preparation programs should engage preservice teachers in agricultural mechanics courses to prepare them to teach specific skills necessary for future employment (Blackburn et al, 2015).…”

“…Although agricultural mechanics has been integrated with or closely related to agricultural education for several years (Thoron, Myers, & Barrick, 2016) numerous agriculture teacher preparation programs require preservice teachers to complete relatively few credit hours of agricultural mechanics courses for graduation (Blackburn et al, 2015). As noted by Burris et al (2005), a majority of teacher preparation programs required fewer than 12 hours in agricultural mechanics.…”

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While agricultural mechanics, which includes metal fabrication, continues to be popular among school-based agricultural education (SBAE) students (Hubert & Leising, 2000), the number of required courses in agricultural mechanics for teaching certification in agricultural education is relatively low (Blackburn, Robinson, & Field, 2015). Despite the minimal required coursework, Saucier and McKim (2010) argued that all SBAE teachers who instruct agricultural mechanics should be technically competent.

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