A Factor Analysis of Professional Education Competencies and Selected Community College Instructors.

Overview & Synopsis

In order to determine the professional education competencies of selected community college vocational instructors, a mail survey questionnaire containing 99 competencies together with a five-point Likert-type scale was used to gather data from a random sample of 160 instructors of business and distributive education at the community college level in four western states. Data were analyzed to determine if there were differences among the community colleges in their responses to the competencies contained in the questionnaire. The factor analysis of data revealed that the business and distributive education instructors agreed in their responses and demonstrated that it is possible to generate factors containing clusters of common professional education competencies. Competencies which clustered under the factors of Instructional Management and Teaching-Learning Process were judged to require the highest level of proficiency. (MU)