The needs of Oklahoma school-based agricultural education teachers related to teaching agriculture, food and natural resources topics

One of the most important factors to developing and sustaining agricultural educators is identifying their highest in-demand needs. Identifying teacher needs on a regular basis is important to continue offering professional development opportunities that are relevant to current situations facing the teaching population. This study, undergirded in Teacher Human Capital Theory, aimed to identify the technical agricultural topics school-based agricultural educators (SBAE) deem as important to their teaching career, as well as their perceived level of knowledge on the 56 identified topics. Ranked Discrepancy Scores (RDS) were utilized to analyze the perceptions of the SBAE teachers across the eight agricultural career and content pathways identified by The Council. Agricultural teachers across Oklahoma were found to have in-demand needs across all technical agricultural topics identified in the instrument. The agricultural career and content pathway of agricultural biotechnology systems was found to have the largest discrepancy across the eight agricultural career and content pathways. Findings from this study could aid Oklahoma State University in identifying purposeful and direct professional development that focuses on the highest in-demand needs of Oklahoma SBAE teachers.