The Educational Process Competencies: Importance to Extension Educators

In the Cooperative Extension Service, competency development is a continuous process. Therefore, the training needs of extension educators should be continuously assessed to provide meaningful staff development programs. The purpose of this study was to determine the importance of 42 professional competencies related to the four educational process areas: needs assessment and program development, learning systems, delivery systems, and evaluation systems. Respondent’s perceptions of the best time to learn each of these competencies was also identified. Randomly selected, 441 extension educators from the North Central Region of the United States participated in this study through an online survey. Results suggest that participants perceived a majority of the competencies to be highly important for their professional development. High percentages of the respondents also perceived that the best time to learn many competencies was through on-the-job experience. Findings have implications for designing flexible staff development programs for extension educators through graduate education, in-service programs, and on-the-job training. Findings also have application in designing new policies for employee selection, training, professional development, and performance appraisal. The findings could be used for designing the professional competency development programs in a variety of international extension settings.