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Browsing by Author "Thoron, Andrew C."

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    Agriscience Teacher Professional Development Focused on Teaching STEM Principles in the Floriculture Curriculum
    Ferand, Natalie K.; DiBenedetto, Catherine A.; Thoron, Andrew C.; Myers, Brian E. (2020)
    Agriscience teachers help support the mission of the American Floral Endowment to inspire people to pursue careers working with plants by providing curricula related to ornamental horticulture. Nevertheless, an overall understanding of how the horticulture industry is connected to the studies of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has left a shortage of skilled professionals. A professional development program was designed to provide agriscience teachers with experiences focused on STEM concepts taught in horticulture and floriculture curricula. The Science Teaching Efficacy Belief (STEB) instrument was used before and after the three days of content specific inquiry-based instruction to determine participants’ perceptions of their performance pre, post, and post-post. While teachers showed growth in their mean scores for the Science Teaching Outcome Expectancy (STOE) and Personal Science Teaching Efficacy Beliefs (PSTEB) constructs of the STEB between all three testing periods, no significant difference was found across the period-of-time. It is recommended that teacher educators consider how to create professional development experiences for agriscience teachers that target content to positively impact teacher self-efficacy. Further, it is recommended that professional development opportunities contain follow-up communication to determine whether teachers utilize curricular resources and ascertain how the teacher’s new knowledge is transferred to inform instructional change. The final recommendation is to measure student learning outcomes as a result of content-specific teacher professional development.
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    The Relationship of Prior FFA Membership on Perceived Ability to Manage an FFA Chapter
    Ferand, Natalie K.; Thoron, Andrew C.; Myers, Brian E. (American Association for Agricultural Education, 2020)
    In order to fill the need in the agriscience teacher shortage, preservice agriscience teacher education needs to seek preservice teachers who may not have had a traditional school-based agriculture background. The influx of new teachers without a school-based agricultural education background brings both opportunities and challenges. Gaps in needs between those teachers who had and those teachers who did not have school-based agricultural education and FFA membership have different teacher professional development needs. This study investigated the professional development need areas based on a needs assessment that investigated knowledge, relevance, and mean weighted discrepancy scores of agriscience teachers who were or were not FFA members. Participants across both groups indicated professional development needs for FFA chapter management. Teachers who were not previously FFA members identified stronger needs across 11 of 13 items. There was a significant difference found between the two groups for four of the 13 chapter management items. Recommendations for future research and programmatic development consisted of the consideration of specific sessions of a basic FFA knowledge with a second session that focuses on technical skill attainment.