Abstract:
The beginning experiences of teachers influence how they teach. This study investigated the influence of the initial ten weeks of the school year on novice teacher efficacy in agricultural education. The participants in this causal comparative study were almost equally distributed (22 student teachers, 29 first-year teachers, 26 second-year teachers, and 29 third-year teachers), 61% (N = 65) were male, and 69% (N = 72) were a student for four years in an agricultural education program in high school. Teacher efficacy decreased for first-year teachers during the first 10 weeks of the school year, but there was essentially no change in teacher efficacy across the first 10 weeks of the school year for student teachers, second-year teachers, and third-year teachers. In comparing the four groups, the greatest difference was between the student teachers and first-year teachers. The student teachers had the highest teacher efficacy and the first-year teachers had the lowest teacher efficacy after the first 10 weeks of the school year. No differences existed between the other groups on 10th-week teacher efficacy.
Keywords:
novice teacher, agricultural education
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