A Quantitative Study Exploring Predictor Variables of Minnesota School-Based Agriculture Education Teachers’ Desire to Deliver Agricultural Mechanics Courses
Abstract
Minnesota School-Based Agricultural Education (SBAE) leaders have observed a resistance among SBAE teachers to accept positions that include numerous agricultural mechanics preps. This study proposes to identify the factors that predict an individual's desire to (or not to) deliver agricultural mechanics courses. All Minnesota SBAE teachers were surveyed in the fall of 2022 using a researcher-designed instrument which was tested for validity and reliability. A 76.69% response rate (N = 250) was achieved for the emailed survey. Demographic and inferential statistics were calculated for the observed responses with a multinomial logistic regression as the focal test to measure the proposed predictor variables and test the overall hypotheses. The results of the regression model were significant, χ2 (33) = 302.79, p < .001, suggesting that age, years of experience, gender, department structure, type of teacher training, agricultural mechanics teaching recency, agricultural mechanics experience, past experience, current conditions, self-efficacy, and support had a significant effect on the odds of observing a SBAE teacher selecting a different categorical desire to teach agricultural mechanics. McFadden's R-squared was calculated to examine the model fit; a resulting 0.50 indicated an excellent fit. Specifically, six predictor variables were found to be statistically significant at the p < .05 level. SBAE leaders and those providing professional development should make an effort to target agricultural mechanics pedagogical support and encouragement to young, female, inexperienced, and/or far-removed individuals in poor laboratory settings, and/or possessing low self-efficacy.