VOCATIONAL AGRICULTURAL TEACHERS PERCEPTIONS OF AGRICULTURAL MECHANICS AND AGRICULTURAL MANAGEMENT COMPETENCIES OF STUDENTS IN THE VOCATIONAL AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE PROGRAM IN TEXAS

Scope and Method of Study. The purpose of this study was to collect and analyze the perceptions of Texas vocational agriculture teachers as to the importance of student competencies taught in the agricultural mechanics and agricultural management part of the Texas vocational agriculture curriculum. The study sought to find if there was a difference in the perceptions of teachers in single teacher departments as compared to those in multiple teacher departments. A difference was also looked at between seven groups depicting years of teaching experience in five year intervals. The population consisted of 1236 Texas vocational agriculture teachers. These teachers were systematically randomly selected into seven groups, each group was given a different questionnaire dealing with competencies in agricultural mechanics or agricultural management.;Findings and Conclusions. The majority of the vocational agriculture teachers perceived the competencies in both agricultural mechanics and agricultural management as being of high importance. There were no competencies that received a total group mean score below the level of medium importance. There were some statistically significant differences found between the single and multiple teacher departments, and between the years of experience groups.