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Understanding job satisfaction, stress, and burnout within agricultural education has the potential to impact the profession's future. Studying these factors through the theoretical lens of social comparison takes a cultural approach by investigating how agriculture teachers interact with and compare themselves to others. The purpose of this study was to determine if relationships existed between social comparison and job satisfaction and/or burnout among secondary agriculture teachers representing six states. Findings indicated that teachers were satisfied with their jobs and tended to engage most frequently in upward assimilative (UA) comparisons, leading to inspiration emotional outcomes. According to the Maslach Burnout Inventory for Educators (MBI-E), teachers experienced low levels of burnout related to personal accomplishment (PA) and depersonalization (DE), and moderate levels related to emotional exhaustion (EE). Seven moderate relationships were found between dimensions of social comparison and either burnout and/or job satisfaction. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

This phenomenological study of early career agriculture teachers sought to determine the meaning early career agriculture teachers ascribe to their time. Seven teachers with a range of experience from mid-first year to beginning of sixth year were chosen. Interviews were used to make meaning of their time. Five themes were found in the information: (a) the day consists of patterns that vary depending upon the time of the year; (b) there is a conscious allocation of work time; (c) the process of managing time adapts and evolves over time; (d) personal and social time for the teacher is woven into or around work; and, (e) tensions exist between how teachers would like to spend their time and how they actually spend their time. Recommendations include taking stock of workload and personal time, identifying times that are most productive and adjusting their schedule to accommodate, developing a rhythm to their work, making decisions about how to spend time and realizing it is an evolving process. (Contains 5 tables and 1 figure.)