The administrative paradox: Assessing how teaching experience affects superintendents’ perceptions of the importance of educational law to agricultural educators

Over time, education has become increasingly more legalistic and litigious. The danger of litigation is an imminent threat for agricultural educators due to the potential financial and professional ramifications. In many cases, agricultural educators may be at higher risk for a lawsuit than teachers of other subjects due to the increased liability and safety hazards of the agricultural education classroom. In most public-school districts, the superintendent manages all school-related legal action. These responsibilities regarding the legal undertakings of the school district are coupled with many superintendents having little-to-no teaching experience. In this study, superintendents (N = 1074) rated the importance of 32 educational law issues to agricultural educators. In the first research objective, we used independent samples t-tests to assess how teaching experience affected the perceptions of superintendents regarding the importance of educational law issues to agricultural education. The results found that superintendents with less teaching experience valued agricultural education specific law issues significantly less than superintendents with more teaching experience. Furthermore, in the second research objective, we used a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to extract four components named: 1) General Educational Law Issues, 2) Special Education/Student Interaction Issues, 3) Student Safety/Teacher Contract Rights, and 4) Student Behavior/Curricular Modification Issues. Ultimately, the superintendents chose issues related to mandated reporting, special education accommodations, and safety as the most important educational law issues for agricultural educators. As a result, we recommend integrating educational law coursework into teacher preparation programs for preservice educators and providing practical professional development on educational law for in-service educators.