The Relationship Between Psychological Needs Satisfaction and Professional Commitment of Minnesota School-Based Agricultural Education Teachers

Abstract

Teachers must be retained in the profession to meet the ever-growing demand for SBAE teachers across the United States. Although the literature has identified several factors which influence SBAE teacher retention, previous research has not examined the psychological needs satisfaction of Minnesota SBAE teachers. While critical to retention, professional commitment remains a needed area within SBAE research. This study viewed psychological needs through the lens of SDT (Ryan & Deci, 2002), recognizing that the psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness are universal and innate needs essential for psychological functioning (Ryan & Deci, 2020). Given that people are drawn to environments that foster needs satisfaction and that needs satisfaction influences beliefs and behaviors (Collie et al., 2016; Lee & Nie, 2014; Mabekoje et al., 2016), teacher’s psychological needs satisfaction influences a teacher's professional commitment. This study aimed to examine if and to what extent psychological needs satisfaction of autonomy, competence, and relatedness was related to and could predict SBAE teachers’ professional commitment. Hypothesized connections were tested simultaneously with a conceptual model where SBAE teacher’s psychological needs satisfaction and professional commitment was examined. Overall, the results revealed that psychological needs satisfaction of autonomy, competence, and relatedness (independently and collectively) have a significant and negative impact on turnover intention, which was used to measure professional commitment. According to the data, competence and autonomy are the primary predictors of professional commitment. These results align with previous research on teachers that indicated autonomy (Collie et al., 2016) and competence (Palmer, 2020) were indicators of professional commitment. It was concluded that satisfying SBAE teachers' psychological needs, especially the need for autonomy and competence, are an essential component of Minnesota SBAE teacher retention. If leaders in SBAE want to reduce attrition, more must be done to support SBAE teacher’s psychological needs satisfaction of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Furthermore, special effort should be made to identify the distinctive needs of the majority of current SBAE teachers with up to ten years teaching experience, who tend to have lower psychological needs fulfillment.