| Abstract: | News headlines across the country continue to include policy updates, new strategies, and other information relating to the continuing teacher shortage in the United States. School-based agricultural education is not immune to the teacher shortage. Agriculture teacher shortages have been documented for more than a century. Extensive research has been conducted on the agriculture teacher shortage dating back to the 1960s. However, the research has approached the problem from a monolithic position. Through this approach, the agriculture teacher shortage could be solved with any one teacher filling any one advertised position. This study sought to investigate the agriculture teacher shortage using a more specific approach by analyzing agriculture teacher demand by pathway. Nearly ten years of job posting data from California and Texas were used to conduct a content analysis of position advertisements. Additionally, I surveyed agriculture teachers in California and Texas to identify teacher assignments by pathway. I found that certain pathways were more frequently requested than others in position descriptions. Furthermore, current agriculture teachers were assigned to teach in specific pathways more frequently as well. In California, the agriscience and agricultural mechanics pathways were in higher demand than the other pathways. In Texas, the applied agricultural engineering and animal science pathways were in higher demand than the other pathways. Mirroring the advertised positions, agriculture teachers in California and Texas were more frequently assigned to teach in those same pathways. The electronic version of this dissertation is accessible from https://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/197789 |
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