<p>STEM education is a top priority
in the educational development of youth across the United States as the country
tries to address the need of having a more well equipped, prepared, and
educated workforce. Agriculture, food, and natural resources (AFNR) has the
ability to provide a relevant context for engaging students in STEM education
through experiential learning. Tragically, both STEM and AFNR struggle to reach
and engage more diversified audiences, especially students of color. AFNR education
provides an authentic avenue to center STEM engagement around addressing
societal grand challenges like food and nutritional security,
childhood-obesity, and climate change; issues faced by all communities. The
approaches and steps taken to address these AFNR related grand challenges can
all be explored through the lens of food systems. Food systems is a concept
within AFNR that encompasses the interdisciplinary components of AFNR, STEM, and
social sciences that provides a breakdown for the process and system involved
in getting food from farm to fork. In an era where youth are more disconnected
from understanding where their food comes from, food systems education has the
ability to reconnect youth to the root of this issue and the potential to lead
them to explore finding solutions to the grand challenges facing their
generation. Furthermore, food systems education provides a context to engage
youth in authentic learning experiences in nonformal and formal classroom
settings around relevant issues with the potential to enhance their interests
and concerns around these topics.</p>
<p><a>The
purpose of this study was to explore and describe elementary school students’
interests and concerns about the food system, and their overall engagement in
the learning experience after participating in an authentic learning based
Virtual Agri+STEM Camp focused on food systems education, AFNR, and STEM
activities. The convenience sample for this study was made up of elementary
school students between grades 3<sup>rd</sup> and 8<sup>th</sup> grade (<i>N</i> = 99) who were either in the classroom
or participating in an at-home Agri+STEM session. The majority of these
students were from rural communities and most of them were African Americans. Quantitative
data was collected before and after participation in the Virtual Agri+STEM Camp
experience that using the research developed Food System Interest and Food
System Concern instrument. Previous AFNR related experiences were also reported
by students. The researcher also used an adapted version of the Intrinsic Motivation
Inventory (IMI) and STEM Semantics survey to measure student engagement and
attitudes after participating in the experience. Descriptive statistics were
used to analyze the data, which included means, standard deviations,
frequencies, and percentages. To explore the relationships between each of the
variables, correlations were also computed. </a></p>
<p>There
were four conclusions for this study. First, students that participated in the
Virtual Agri+STEM Camp were motivated and engaged in the learning process while
doing the Agri+STEM Camp activities. Second, students that participated in the
Virtual Agri+STEM Camp were interested and concerned about the food system
before and after participating in the Virtual Agri+STEM Camp. Third, African
American student participants reported less previous AFNR experiences, yet they
reported more interests and concerns in the food system than Caucasian American
participants before and after completing the Virtual Agri+STEM Camp. Lastly, Students
that felt more competent, saw the value, and were interested/enjoyed the
Agri+STEM experience were more likely to be interested and concerned about the
food system. Recommendations for future research and implications for practice
and policy were discussed.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:purdue.edu/oai:figshare.com:article/14865723 |
| Date | 23 July 2021 |
| Creators | Ryan D Kornegay (11036142) |
| Source Sets | Purdue University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis |
| Rights | CC BY 4.0 |
| Relation | https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/EXPLORING_DIVERSE_RURAL_ELEMENTARY_STUDENTS_INTERESTS_AND_CONCERNS_OF_THE_FOOD_SYSTEM_AFTER_PARTICIPATING_IN_A_VIRTUAL_AGRI_STEM_EXPERIENCE/14865723 |
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