Developing a Guide for the Sustainable Agriculture Education Program at the Duke Campus Farm
Abstract
The goal of this study was to create a guide that aids individuals and institutions
develop educational programs about sustainability for their farms. Interest in such
programs is increasing and relatively few guides are available. The Duke Campus Farm
is the intended first audience. To create this guide, I assessed current practices
in sustainable agriculture education (SAE) using two methods: a curricular analysis
of various courses about farming education, and in-person interviews with observations
of existing local programs. I evaluated fifty-eight syllabi from 30 post-secondary
institutions using three broad “meta-categories”: Content, Tools, and Approach. I
performed interviews and observations about local best practices, needs of different
ages and useful educational activities. The curricular analysis showed consistency
for 14 content areas, 10 tool areas, and 10 approaches. For Content the top five
were categories were Sustainable Agriculture Theories and Concepts, Farm Management,
Production Methods, Soil and Natural Science. For Tools, these categories were Traditional
Academic, Hands-On Experiences, Comparisons, Evaluations, Assessments and Analyses
(CEAA), Projects and Community Building. Lastly for Approaches,the categories were
Traditional Academic, Experiential Learning, Environmental Education, Cooperative
Learning and Multidisciplinary. From the curricular analysis, the Programming for
Education in Agriculture and Sustainability (PEAS) tool was created to educate the
user about relationships of each of theses meta-categories. From the interviews, recurrent
advices in the following 4 areas emerged: Activities or Lessons, Infrastructure Design,
Participant Management and, Program and Curriculum Design. Results from both methods
combined allowed for a powerful decision making tool for various institutions. In
addition to highlighting salient factors present, the systematic analysis of syllabi
identified gaps that can improve SAE and help clarify a standard for the discipline.
Type
Master's projectPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/6921Citation
Cory-Watson, Damon (2013). Developing a Guide for the Sustainable Agriculture Education Program at the Duke Campus
Farm. Master's project, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/6921.Collections
More Info
Show full item record
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Rights for Collection: Nicholas School of the Environment
Works are deposited here by their authors, and represent their research and opinions, not that of Duke University. Some materials and descriptions may include offensive content. More info