An Analysis of Induction-Year Agricultural Education Teachers' Attitude toward Teaching during the 2011-2012 School Year in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico

Teacher shortages are a critical issue for education, and agricultural education has not been exempt from this trend. Many factors possibly contribute to this lack of qualified teachers. Researchers suggest that retention practices, stress factors associated with agricultural education, and job satisfaction may be areas for improvement within the profession. A deeper understanding of the problems beginning teachers experience is a critical first step in raising the retention rate for new teachers. An original researcher-designed instrument based on Moir was composed of 66 items intended to measure induction-year teachers’ attitude toward teaching and was administered at six different points in time to induction-year agriculture teachers in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico during the 2011–2012 school year. Data collection occurred via a mixed mode design following the Tailored Design Method. The overall response rate was 52.5% with 197 responses to the instrument. All 66 scale items from the original questionnaire were included in the principal component analysis (PCA) with varimax rotation; coefficients with an absolute value less than 0.45 were suppressed. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) of sampling adequacy was 0.787 and Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant (p < 0.001). Factor analysis yielded a nine factor solution using varimax rotation. Forty-five items composed the Agricultural Education Induction-Year Teacher Attitudinal Scale. Descriptive names for the constructs were the product of 20 experts in the field of agricultural education: “Professional Efficacy,” “Balanced Reflection,” “Professional Commitment,” “Professional Confidence,” “Anticipated Change,” “Work-Life Balance,” “Strategic Renewal,” “Problem Solving,” and “Professional Resolve.” Overall reliability coefficient for the proposed new instrument was 0.88. Overall attitude toward teaching was not statistically significantly different across measures. No significant predictors of attitude toward teaching based on selected demographic variables were generated as a result of forced entry regression. Grand mean scores per round did not statistically differ from one round to another. A model of induction-year agricultural education teacher’s attitudes was proposed along with a scale adjusted model of agricultural education teacher attitude toward teaching. A model of all attitude constructs was presented to illustrate the effect of time on the attitude of the induction-year agricultural education teachers