NEED FOR COMPETENCY DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURAL TEACHERS IN NORTHEAST

Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate: 1) socio–economic attributes of agriculture teachers in northeastern Thailand; 2) needs for competency development of the agriculture teachers; and 3) relationships between the teacher’s socio–economic attributes and their competency. The sample groups consisted of 196 secondary school agriculture teachers from 196 school on 6 education areas in lower parts of northeastern Thailand, all total 402 school. They were obtained by a random sampling method of Krejci & Morgan. A questionnaire was used for data collection and analyzed by using frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and correlation coefficient.

The Results of the study revealed that most of the respondents were males (63.4%), 50–59 years old, bachelor’s degree graduates (57.1%) with professional agriculture teacher (59.8%), and their monthly income was 30,000 Baht and above (58.9%). About one half of the respondents had 21 years of service and above (50.9%) and their rank was senior professional Level (52.7%). More than one half of the respondents taught both lower and upper secondary school students (68.8%) and they taught more than 3 subjects (80.4%). Most of the respondents had other assigned tasks besides teaching (87.5%) and they had developed themselves based on their work, duties assigned and their interest. Less than one half of the respondents had been teaching agriculture for 21 years and above (43.8%). The respondents had a high level of core competency (= 4.40, S.D. = 0.52) and functional competency ( = 4.42, S.D. = 0.54). The findings also showed that the number of subjects to be taught had a variant significant relationship with core and functional competencies at a low level (r = .288, p =< .001)