Perceived Self-Efficacy of Preservice Agriculture Teachers toward Specific SAE Competencies

Since its inception, school-based agricultural education in the United States has utilized the home project method, later known as a supervised agricultural experience program (SAE), as a way to provide students with contextual, hands-on learning experiences outside of class that complement classroom learning. While most teachers realize the benefits of SAE programs, the use of SAE has declined over time, and many agriculture teachers new to the profession may not be as proficient in implementing SAE programs. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine preservice agriculture teachers’ self-efficacy of the AAAE-SAE Competencies. Results indicated that 95% of the respondents considered SAE to be important or somewhat important components of agricultural education. Additionally, all respondents reported to have moderately high efficaciousness for their ability to perform all of the SAE competencies. What is more, few differences were found between preservice teachers who possessed SAE and agricultural education experience versus preservice teachers who had little or no experience with SAE and agricultural education. The researchers recommend that teacher preparation program in agriculture continue to provide instruction over SAE and should implement learning experiences in SAE that provide authentic, relevant instruction to preservice teachers on developing, implementing, maintaining, sustaining, evaluating, and supervising an SAE program.