DEVELOPING A MODEL OF COOPERATING TEACHER EFFECTIVENESS

A trend in agricultural education has been a shortage of graduates from preservice agricultural education programs who choose to enter the teaching profession, thus causing a deficit in the number of qualified teachers to fill vacancies. When examining preservice agricultural education programs, student teaching is often the capstone experience, during which, the student teacher works closely with the cooperating teacher. Given that the student teaching experience is often the final semester of preservice agricultural education programs, it is reasonable to assume that satisfaction with that experience contributed to a student teacher’s decision to enter the teaching profession. Because the decision to enter teaching is made by the student teacher, insight into their perceptions of the student teaching experience, particularly the cooperating teacher, is invaluable. The purpose of this study was to develop a model of cooperating teacher effectiveness by replicating the work of Roberts and Dyer (2004). The Delphi method was utilized with an expert panel (N = 13) of all the student teachers from the University of Florida. Thirty characteristics were identified and grouped into the categories of Teaching/Instruction, Professionalism, Student Teacher/Cooperating Teacher Relationship, and Personal Characteristics.