Professional competencies needed by agriculture teachers in Hyderabad Division, Sindh, Pakistan

This study identified 92 professional competencies needed by agriculture teachers. All competencies were considered to be of moderate to high importance;The population for this study consisted of agriculture teachers and headmasters of 50 randomly selected schools in Hyderabad Division and all eight teacher educators at Sindh Agriculture University, Tandojam, Pakistan. A 1-5 point scale was used to access the degree of competence needed by agriculture teachers for each of the 92 competencies included in the instrument. These competencies were grouped into six competency categories. These categories were: (i) program management, (ii) guidance, (iii) professional role and development, (iv) program planning, (v) program execution, and (vi) program evaluation. The instrument also gathered data related to demographic characteristics of teachers and headmasters. Data were collected through personal visits. Data were analyzed by calculating means and standard deviations for individual competencies and six competency categories. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and t-test were used to test differences among groups. The alpha level was set a priori in all cases at the 0.05 level of significance;Findings indicate that a significant difference existed between perceptions of teacher educators and the other two groups of respondents. Teacher educators perceived high importance for the professional role and development category, while teachers perceived evaluation of instruction category as most important for agriculture teachers. Headmasters perceived program management category of high importance. No significant difference existed between overall means when agriculture teachers were grouped by demographic characteristics. When headmasters were grouped by student enrollment in the school, a significant difference was observed for the competency categories of program management , execution of instruction , and overall