Performing Department
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Non Technical Summary
The agricultural literacy of America's youth has a significant economic, social, and environmental impact on the U.S. Currently, the agricultural industry needs a competent and qualified workforce to meet the demand for food and fiber. Agricultural educators within middle and high schools provide students with important agricultural industry skills and knowledge. Furthermore, an effective educator is the leading indicator of student achievement, and comprehensive professional development is the most efficient method of improving the effectiveness of educators. This project aims to provide targeted professional development opportunities for New Mexico secondary agricultural educators. This 48-month project would select a cohort of ten New Mexico agricultural educators each year for a total of 40 participants over the life of the project. The first cohort would receive a year-long immersive animal science experience, with each following year's cohorts receiving comprehensive professional development on agricultural power and technology, welding, and plant science. These themes were selected based on the professional development needs of agricultural educators. The model used in this project utilizes industry partners to provide a three-day meeting conducted on New Mexico State University's campus, monthly Zoom meetings with the participants, and an industry immersion travel experience for the participants. Furthermore, each of the participants would be paired with a mentor in order to provide them with continuous support throughout the project's duration. The industry partners in this project (DNMC, GENEX, Coterra, Pattern Energy, Power Distributors, Lincoln Electric, and Mrs. Gute and Klinger) are critical to providing the industry-aligned professional development proposed.
Animal Health Component
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Research Effort Categories
Basic
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Applied
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Developmental
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Goals / Objectives
Goal 1: Provide professional development to school-based agricultural educators in three topic areas: Animal Health and Production and Animal Products, Agriculture Systems and Technology, and Plant Health and Production and Plant ProductsGoal 2: Provide mentoring to school-based agricultural educators in three topic areas:Animal Health and Production and Animal Products, Agriculture Systems and Technology, and Plant Health and Production and Plant ProductsObjective 1: Develop an immersive professional development program for agricultural educators.Rationale: The most effective way to change the practices of teachers in their classrooms is through professional development (Supovitz & Turner, 2000). The core features of effective professional development include content focus, active learning, and collective participation (Desimone, 2009).Activity 1.1: Develop four immersive professional development experiences for agricultural educators.Design/Management: Based on the needs of agricultural educators in our state the following four topic areas will be utilized to design immersive professional development experiences: 1) Animal Science; 2) Agricultural Mechanics; 3) Agricultural Power and Technologies; 4) Plant Science. The immersive professional development experience will be developed to allow agricultural educators to gain knowledge and skills currently being utilized within the industries which they can then incorporate into their curriculums. Each participant will receive a toolkit during the year with supplies for implementing this curriculum into their classrooms.Activity 1.2: Develop monthly distance workshops for agricultural educators during their academic year.Design/Management: Monthly online workshops will be created based on the topic for the year. These workshops will provide the agricultural educators and their mentors with opportunities to learn, share, and reflect on different topics each month. During these workshops video modules of experienced educators demonstrating the topics within the classroom will be utilized. Mentors will be asked to join in the workshops to provide their expertise.Activity 1.3: Develop yearly three-day professional development conference with experiential learning opportunities and mentor relationship building activities.Design/Management: At the beginning of each recruitment year participants and mentors will participate in a three-day professional development conference on the NMSU campus. During this time agricultural educators will have an opportunity to discuss areas they need assistance with, meet and interact with their mentor, and participate in experiential professional development.Objective 2: Create a career mentoring program for AGRI-TED participants.Rationale: The diverse nature of teaching agriscience can cause it to be challenging (Tummons et al., 2016). Early career agriscience educators often report issues of isolation and being overwhelmed by all their professional duties (Greiman, Walker, & Birkenholz, 2005). To aid in solving these issues educational leaders have implemented induction programs with mentoring components (Ingersoll & Smith, 2004). Mentors are individuals with similar experiences that committed to supporting a protégé (Kram, 1985). Studies have shown that educators in their early career that participate in a mentor program have increased job satisfaction and higher job retention (Koberg et al., 1994; Watt, 2022). Further watching others teach can be a meaningful professional development practice (Desimore, 2009).Activity 2.1: Train mentors to provide career and psychosocial support for protégés.Design/Management: During the initial three-day professional development conference mentors will participate in professional development programming focused on effective mentoring behaviors and activities. Training will focus on the mentor's roles and responsibilities and will include topics ranging from interpersonal communication, relationship building, guided reflection.Activity 2.2: Create Video-based modules of experienced agricultural educators for each workshop topic.Design/Management: For this activity experienced professionals in the topic area will be asked to allow the filming of teaching. These video modules will then be viewed during the monthly web workshop and discussed. This will allow for the participants to ask questions and have discussion about the teaching methods utilized.
Project Methods
Approach to Agricultural Science Professional DevelopmentProfessional development will be provided for school-based agricultural educators through on-campus meeting, web-based conferences, industry immersion experience, and through a mentor program.On-Campus Meeting- The annual on-campus meetings content will depend on that year's professional development theme. The meeting will be held in November each year to provide initial professional development to the participants and determine the needs of the participants within the cohort to help develop the immersion experience. Participants will be assigned their mentors then.Web-Based Conferences- The web-based conferences will allow each participant to reflect upon the instructional methods used to teach the content knowledge gained in the on-campus meeting, collaborate with their mentors, and it will provide a time for project evaluation and qualitative data collection between the senior personnel and the participants. These engaging web conferences will allow the senior personnel and the mentors to provide continued support for the participants throughout the school year.Industry Immersion Experience- The industry immersion experience will allow the participants to engage with current agricultural practices within each year's selected theme. The project collaborators (DNMC, Genex, Coterra, Pattern Energy, Lincoln Electric, and Ms. Klinger and Gute) will assist in planning immersive industry professional development. This professional development will allow educators to experience industry practices first-hand and further develop their content knowledge and instructional practices. In the first year, each participant will be trained and certified in Artificial Insemination (AI) by qualified GENEX trainers. In addition, DNMC has agreed to provide hands-on and industry-relevant training to the participants in the areas of animal nutrition, animal pathology, breeding selection, etc. The second year's on-campus meeting will provide professional development in the area of agricultural mechanics. The Lincoln Welding company agreed to provide industry-aligned training in Shielded Metal Arc Welding (SMAW), Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW), oxy-fuel metallurgy practices, and Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG) welding. The third year's theme is Agricultural Power and the industry professionals at Coterra and Pattern Energy have agreed to provide professional development on agricultural mechanization. The final year of the project will give educators industry-applicable experience in Plant Science. Jessie Gute and Jan Klinger, experienced plant science educator have agreed to provide this professional development. Local Greenhouse tours will be set up closer to the anticipated implementation. These immersive experiences will allow the participants to research, try, solve, and reflect upon industry-aligned knowledge and skills. This will improve the instructional abilities of agricultural educators by ensuring their content knowledge is up-to-date and aligned with industry practices.Mentor Program- The mentor program will allow experienced agricultural educators to counsel early-career agricultural educators. Currently, 50% of agricultural educators leave the profession in their first five years of employment. A strong mentor teacher has been shown to approve educator attrition rates. This mentor program will allow experienced agricultural educators to guide those less experienced as they navigate the difficulties of an agricultural educator. Five experienced agricultural educators will go through mentor training and then be assigned to two of the participants. By assigning mentors the participants will have someone that can assist them throughout their career.Evaluation MethodsThe evaluation of this program will be conducted by an external evaluator, Dr. Ryan Anderson. Dr. Anderson has been involved in several USDA grant projects as a PD and Co-PD where he has worked closely with program evaluators. He has extensive experience developing and delivering professional development programming to agricultural educators. To measure the overall objective of developing an immersive professional development experience for agricultural educators, all participants will be surveyed at the end of their experience to determine the success. The curriculum from the monthly professional development, along with the three days on campus and summer immersion program will be evaluated throughout the program. The table below describes the proposed evaluation measures for each activity over the life of this program.The intent of the evaluation is to contribute to the success of this program. Accordingly, it employs a mixed method approach that continually assesses progress towards and achievement of project objectives. To achieve this, input will be collected from program participants and stakeholders from formative assessments and summative evaluations. Elements comprising the evaluation plan are pre-flection and reflection exercises; formative feedback; reflection sessions, observations, and informal interviews throughout the institute; tracking quantifiable outcomes; and post-completion follow-up interviews with participants. The evaluation plan culminates in annual Project Assessment Reports. To eliminate bias and the possibility of subjective interpretation, data will be provided in writing as appropriate.Pre-flection and reflection exercises are qualitative questionnaires administered at the onset and the end of key activities. Formative feedback will be acquired using qualitative survey questionnaires along with follow-up focus group discussions designed to collect input from participants and stakeholders. Institute participants will complete the surveys and participate in the focus group discussions at least once annually.