Agricultural Teachers' Professional Competency for Working with Students with Special Needs in Iran

The purpose of this study was to identify Professional Competencies (PCs), including General and Specific Competencies (GSCs), of Agricultural Teachers (ATs) working with Students with Special Needs (SSNs), known as exceptional students (1,013 people), in Vocational High School Education System (VHSES) in Iran, within two phases. Accordingly, the main objective of the first phase was to identify General Competencies (GCs) of these teachers. Therefore, in the first phase, the components of teachers’ GCs were taken from theoretical literature and research documents via content analysis and the findings revealed that the GCs encompassed 6 components of Instruction Design (ID), Professional Development (PD), Professional Ethics (PEs), cooperation, Perceived Student Diversity (PSD), and technology. The objective of the second phase of this study was also to find Specific Competencies (SCs) of ATs working with SSNs. This phase of the study was conducted using the classical 3-step Delphi technique. In this respect, the specialized Delphi team consisted of 22 ATs working at Iran’s Exceptional Schools (ESs), selected through purposive sampling method. Finally, the findings reduced to the identification of 24 SCs for ATs working with SSNs, which were then grouped into two categories of Agricultural Competencies (ACs) and Exceptional Competencies (ECs).