Analyzing agricultural education student teachers' critical thinking skills through blogs in an online community of practice

The purpose of this thesis was to explore the critical thinking demonstrated within student teacher blog posts as student teachers discussed and reflected in an online community of practice during their student teaching experiences, and to determine the critical thinking demonstrated within student teaching blog posts as the blog posts related to the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC) standards. The objectives of the thesis were to: (1) determine the frequency and the average level of critical thinking exhibited by Iowa State University agricultural education student teachers’ reflections through blog posts in an electronic community of practice, (2) determine the relationship, if any, between the number of blogs posted by each student teacher and the average level of critical thinking displayed by student teachers within the blog posts, (3) determine the frequency in which student teacher blog posts related to the ten InTASC standards, and (4) determine the relationship, if any, between the average level of critical thinking displayed within student teacher blog posts and the frequency with which those blog posts related to the InTASC standards. Twenty-one agricultural education student teachers at Iowa State University comprised the convenience sample during the fall of 2013 and spring 2014. Provisional coding and simultaneous coding were utilized to analyze student teacher blog posts; frequencies, percentages, and Spearman’s rho were calculated. Overall, student teacher blog posts were at the lower-order levels of critical thinking. Student teachers did not utilize blogging and the community of practice in a manner that has recently been researched to enhance critical thinking skills. There was no relationship between the number of blog posts a student teacher posted and that student