Four Women’s Experiences in Agriculture Education Across Generations

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to discover the perceptions and barriers for female agriculture educators across three generations in a non-traditional field of agriculture. The United States Department of Labor (2006) defined a non-traditional job as any occupation where one gender comprises 25% or less of the total employment. Camp, Broyles, and Skelton (2002) revealed secondary female agriculture teachers comprise 22% of the agriculture education field. However, there is a 35% female student membership in high school FFA (National FFA, 2000) so why is there a discrepancy in the number of high school females taking agriculture and the low number females in the teaching field? There are several perceptions of why this is occurring.

Four female agriculture teachers were interviewed with the open-ended question: “What are your experiences in teaching agriculture education in a predominately male field?” The teachers selected were from three generations: early Baby Boomer, late Baby Boomer, Generation Xer, and Millennial. Each participant has a Bachelor‟s degree in agricultural education and ethnicity was not taken into account when selecting participants.

These four women's experience in teaching agriculture education across generations revealed many statements with similar content. The barriers included, but not exclusively, qualification to teach agriculture education, challenges in teaching agriculture education, stress in teaching agriculture education, and stereotyping of agriculture teachers.