Texas Agriscience Teacher Confidence Levels to Teach Advanced Animal Science for Science Credit

The primary purpose of this study was to determine the confidence level of Texas agricultural science teachers offering science credit in the advanced animal science classes and determine teachers’ levels of confidence in teaching the required curriculum for that course. The study also sought to provide demographic data on the teachers, student enrollment and programs that are offering the science credit in their courses with questions on school size, number of sections being offered and the number of students in these classes, the grade level of the students in the class and if the class will be offered again. The teaching of such courses is a recently new development and as such, it is important to describe what types of programs are providing this educational opportunity to their students. In Texas there were 51 (N= 51) teachers identified as teaching the advanced animal science course. Of those teachers, 44 (n= 44) responded to the survey instrument. This resulted in an 86% response rate. This quantitative study utilized a descriptive-correlational research design. The researcher developed instrument was a 48 item instrument consisting of nominal and ordinal scales of measurement that asked the participant to indicate a level of confidence; containing questions based on a Likert-type scale. Participant answers were constructed around the 15 TEKS implemented by the state board of education on August 15, 2010. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients and point-biserial coefficients were used to measure relationships between teacher confidence levels and demographic characteristics. Most participants were younger teachers in the age range of 21-30 years with one to five years experience. The majority of teachers in the study did not have the secondary science teacher certification. The study included programs of all sizes (1A to 5A) with average class sizes of 21-25 students. Teachers felt the least confident to teach TEKS 130.7c (2): The student uses scientific methods and equipment during field and laboratory investigations. Teachers felt the most confident teaching TEKS 130.7 (c) 15: The student develops an advanced supervised agriculture experience program as it relates to agriculture, food, and natural resources. There were medium relationships found between teacher confidence levels prior to and after teaching the course. The findings suggest that there are some relationships between teachers’ years of experience, school size and participant age to their confidence levels in integrating science in the advanced animal science course.