Date of Award

1984

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine vocational agriculture teachers' perceptions of their roles and responsibilities for and the importance of selected educationally related aspects of young/adult programs in agriculture. It was also the intent of the study to identify some characteristics of these programs in the South. A proportional two-phase random sampling technique was used to select 361 teachers in four states in the Southern region. The four-part questionnaire, developed to record responses, netted an 82.8% usable return rate after four follow-up procedures, which included an intensive follow-up of non-respondents. Participants' responses were recorded on an 11-point continuum and then transformed to a 0 to 16 certainty scale for data analysis. Vocational agriculture teachers perceived themselves as being to some extent (means of 8.00 or higher) responsible for all 16 roles and responsibilities items. In addition, teachers considered 22 of the 28 program factors as being of some (means of 8.00 to 10.00) or substantial (means higher than 10.00) importance to successful programs. Teachers with programs felt greater responsibility for all 16 roles and responsibilities and attached more importance to 22 of 28 program factors than teachers without programs. The selected teacher demographic variables had little or no influence on teachers' perceptions of their roles and responsibilities for and their perceived importance of selected program factors. However, the majority of teachers who conducted programs were found in multiple teacher departments and had more years of experience than teachers without programs. Finally, of the 151 respondents (50.7%) with programs, 90.1% had enrollments of 10 or more participants per class; 83.4% of the respondents implemented eight or more instructional meetings; and 75.5% carried out on-the-farm instructional visits.

Pages

182

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_disstheses.3957

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