Recipient Organization
SOUTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY
PO BOX 2275A
BROOKINGS,SD 57007
Performing Department
College of Education & Human Sciences
Non Technical Summary
While STEM integration into agricultural education has been occurring since the 1990's, one area of agricultural education was left out, agricultural mechanics. Efforts to improve the agriscience curriculum continue, but despite over 30 years of advancement, still little has been done to improve the STEM content in the agricultural mechanics courses and laboratories. Physical science, mathematics, and engineering abound in this setting, but little evidence exists as to how to help make these underlying principles more prominent and relevant to students in these classes. This project focuses on adding to the agriscience movement by finally adding in the field of agricultural mechanics or power and technical systems as it is known in some states.To help teachers illuminate the science and engineering already in their content, this project will work to identify the best practices in agricultural mechanics, engineering and physical science education as well as the most relevant content in agricultural mechanics content for rural Midwest communities and integrate the two. Through evaluation, creation and distribution of a science and engineering integrated curriculum, this project aims to further the ability of rural teachers to prepare their students for careers in 21st century STEM fields. To help teachers gain these skills and confidence in these areas, an annual workshop will be held to give teachers the opportunity to experience the new curriculum and pilot the lessons. Following the pilot year, curriculum will be published through OPEN Prairie, a freely accessible online document repository hosted by SDSU. Evaluation efforts will help researchers better understand teacher needs as well as provide ongoing data on what works in rural STEM education in informal settings, like the agricultural mechanics courses and laboratories. It is anticipated that his project will lead to the creation and dissemination of STEM enhanced agricultural mechanics lessons, improved teaching practices related to the inclusion of STEM in the Power, Structures, and Technical Systems pathway, and an overall increase in the STEM content being included in the rural agricultural education programs of the upper Midwest.
Animal Health Component
50%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
30%
Applied
50%
Developmental
20%
Goals / Objectives
1. Facilitate the adoption of an agriscience curriculum framework that is grounded in the concepts and approach of the Next Generation Science Standards. a. Identify practices and cross-cutting concepts from the Next Generation Science Standards to be included in a secondary school agriscience program.
b. Disseminate the curriculum framework to secondary agriculture teachers and teacher educators.
2. Identify teaching methods, resources (facilities, equipment, materials, etc), and techniques currently utilized by exemplary teachers.
3. Develop an innovation configuration for implementing an agriscience program
Project Methods
Objective 1: Identify practices, cross-cutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas to be included in a secondary school agriscience program:Initial steps on Objectives 1 will focus on determining the best-practices in physical science and agricultural mechanics instruction and will occur at the beginning of the project. This will be achieved both through a search of the literature, but also through qualitative focus groups with teacher educators, teachers, and content specialists in both ag mechanics and STEM fields. It is anticipated that 10-15 people will be included in these focus groups. Thematic coding and analysis (Creswell, 2008; Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011) will allow for the identification of cross-cutting themes not currently included on the Framework for Agricultural STEM Education.Objective 2: Identify teaching methods, resources (facilities, materials, etc), and techniques currently utilized by exemplary teachersFollowing the identification of additional cross-cutting themes, additional focus group and Delphi surveys (Green, 2014) will be employed to identify pedagogical content knowledge specific to STEM integrated agricultural mechanics. Results will be integrated into the second year of the project to create a best-practices document for helping agricultural educators better integrate STEM into their agricultural mechanics curriculum. Once best practices are outlined, then efforts will be to integrate and enhance the science and engineering principles which already exist but are largely overlooked.Objective 3: Develop and innovation configuration for implementing an agriscience program.Using the documents created in Objective 1 and 2, lessons will be developed which integrate STEM content and practices with the best-practices in pedagogy. Ten to 20 teachers will be self-selected each year to participate in a training workshop which instructs teachers both in the pedagogy and STEM content they will need to successfully pilot teach these new lessons. As a part of the lesson development and teacher workshops, the following steps will be conducted each year:Longitudinal survey of teachers' perceptions regarding STEM integration (Concerns based Adoption Model Survey) in ag mechanics as well as annual evaluation of best practices in science and engineering applications in ag mechanics. (Years 2-4, 20 participants)STEM-based agricultural mechanics units of instruction will be developed on an ongoing basis. Curriculum will focus both on the physical science concepts (aligned to NGSS) and engineering design principles integrated into traditional agricultural mechanics topics. (Years 2-4, 20 participants)Hands-on experiential workshops for teachers to both gain familiarity with the curriculum as well as to provide advanced content teachers may not be familiar with. Teachers' evaluation of workshops will be utilized to enhance future workshops. (Years 2-4, 20 participants)Post-utilization surveys of teachers to determine the effectiveness of the units and to find ways to improve the curriculum aids prior to general distribution. (Years 3-5, 20 participants)Curriculum effectiveness will be measured in two parts. The first will be through the teachers self-reported utilization of the curriculum, and their evaluation of the quality of the lessons and evaluations of the lesson resources. The second will be through the evaluation of student test scores on pre/post assessments related to the content. (Years 3-5, 20 teacher participants and assessment data from an estimated 400 students)