Relationship of Instructional Supervision with Agriculture Teachers’ Job Satisfaction and Their Intention to Remain in the Teaching Profession

The purpose of this census study was to measure the extent to which supervision experienced by agriculture teachers in Iowa was related to job satisfaction and intention to remain in the teaching profession. Results demonstrated that roughly one-fifth of agriculture teachers were never observed teaching by their supervisor during an entire academic year. In addition, more than one half of the teachers had not participated in a preobservation conference, and about one third had not participated in a postobservation conference with their supervisor. It was concluded that a significant number of agriculture teachers in Iowa were neither supervised nor evaluated during a complete academic year. Selected components of supervision that included observation, preobservation conferencing, postobservation conferencing, supervisor support, and supervisor guidance were not useful predictors of agriculture teachers’ job satisfaction nor of their intentions to remain in teaching. Two extraneous variables education level and collegial environment were positively and significantly related to job satisfaction and intention to remain in teaching. Agriculture teachers who experienced collaborative supervision reported a slightly but significantly higher level of job satisfaction than teachers who did not experience collaborative supervision.