78 Results In general, teachers perceived they had content mastery thanks to their industry careers but report they need more opportunities for observations of experienced teachers and additional training in core education skills such as classroom management and lesson planning. Supervisory participants perceived alternatively certified career and technology teachers as masters of the content they teach. However, like teachers, supervisors saw a need for additional training for alternatively certified teachers on basic teacher skills, including curriculum development. The similarities between teacher and supervisor answers on the strengths and weaknesses of alternatively certified career and technology teachers indicate potential areas for further exploration in subsequent studies. The most notable strengths were in the area of content. Supervisor and teacher participants both noted that content mastery was a shared strength. Areas suggested for improvement were in additional observations, lesson planning assistance, and basic pedagogy. The current study found that both interview groups agreed on these areas of improvement. Figure 1 provides a visual to the themes that emerged from the current study. These results show correlation between the research question and themes that related most closely. Content Mastery The first theme that emerged related to teacher perceptions on their level of preparedness for the classroom was content mastery. Content mastery in the current study refers to the background knowledge of the teacher’s subject matter specialty. For example, a practicing nurse who chose to become a teacher would enter the field of education with content mastery in the medical field of nursing. A nurse’s professional content mastery would transfer to content mastery of the curriculum they teach for medical assistant courses. All of the teacher participants interviewed revealed that they each felt as though their professional background assisted them in their current role because they had mastery of the content they currently teach. Content mastery meets requirements the TEA requires of educators to qualify for teacher certification through an alternative pathway (TEA, 2019). Vanessa Zavar, EdD Figure 1. Emergent Themes RQ1 RQ2 RQ3
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