The Relationship between Agriculture Knowledge Basesfor Teaching and Sources of Knowledge

摘要

The purpose of this study was to describe the agriculture knowledge bases for teaching ofagriculture teachers and to see if a relationship existed between years of teaching experience,sources of knowledge, and development of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), usingquantitative methods. A model of PCK from mathematics was utilized as a framework to guide thestudy. On the job teaching experience, teacher preparation program, high school agricultureexperience, previous agriculturally related jobs and internships, internet and other media, andprofessional development were all reported as effective sources of content knowledge. All six of the PCK knowledge constructs were perceived by teachers as possessing them to a fair extent. Thecontent knowledge constructs were rated higher on average than the PCK constructs. Stepwisemultiple linear regressions were utilized to determine if linear relationships existed betweenperceived PCK bases and sources of content knowledge. Four of the PCK knowledge constructsyielded statistically significant predictive models. Six of the seven sources of content knowledgewere significant predictors for at least one of the constructs. Future research should include going beyond teachers’ perceptions and measuring PCK and examination into the process from thesources of content knowledge to the development of PCK.