Agricultural Biotechnology Education

Less than 3% of the United States population lives on what is today defined as farms. The question has been raised, Why spend time on agricultural education (ag ed) in schools when such a small population would use it? The answer should be as simple as, Do you eat food and care about how it is produced? As witnessed in the press, an increasing number of people are interested in the food they eat. Unfortunately, their judgment of food is based on very little knowledge of the production, handling, processing and commercialization of this food. Returning to the question Is agricultural education necessary?, the answer should be It's a requirement. No one academic discipline has and will continue to experience the kinds of pressure to explain to the public the practical relationships among food, consumers and biotechnology like the educators involved in agriculture. Yet many agriculture educators find themselves illequipped to communicate the science and technical knowledge needed to meet these present and future challenges in agriculture. The biotechnology program at Iowa State University (ISU) since 1994 has concentrated on helping classroom ag ed teachers meet these challenges. In 1992, ISU biotechnology director Dr. Walter Fehr convened a group of secondary, extension and college educators to the first Biotechnology Education Council meeting on campus in Ames, Iowa. In those early meetings it became apparent from research and the members' own experiences that in order to get biotechnology integrated into K- 12 school curriculums, the program would have to overcome three major hurdles. 1. Educators lacked the content and technical knowledge to feel comfortable about integrating biotechnology into their curriculums. 2. There was a serious shortage of money for supplies, equipment and release time for educators to obtain training. 3. There was little time during the day and in classrooms to prepare and present biotechnology. With the securing of a Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust grant and industry support, ISU launched the Biotechnology Public Education program in 1994. The philosophy then continues today -teachersteach-teachers biotechnology. The program would be centered around the inquiry-based or hands-on pedagogy of instruction. Each set of classroom activities would be tested by teachers and would focus on the basic scientific principles and technical skills of biotechnology. Fifteen teachers, each representing an Area Education Agency (AEA), were trained by ISU faculty and staff and were given the title Master Teachers. This was later expanded to include the seven regional extension areas in Iowa. The original activities were DNA extraction, DNA fingerprinting (restriction analysis) and bacterial transformation. The master teachers' responsibilities were to hold workshops in their regions to train other educators in the preparation and delivery of these activities. These educators, in turn, would receive free supplies, equipment and technical support to help them integrate the biotechnology activities into their curriculums. Many of the first workshops were hosted in one of the regional Area Education Agencies or Local Education Agencies (LEA) in the state. Targeted educators taught science (biology), ag ed, family and consumer sciences or were extension educators. Later, workshops were moved to ISU's campus and divided into three specific workshops to better address the different needs of each discipline. All the activities have been tested by educators to meet their needs, particularly the need to fit activities into a 45-minute classroom period. For activities that take longer than 45 minutes, stopping points were built into the procedures. This helped alleviate the concern of time to do some of the activities. …