Immersive experiences in agriculture for STEM teachers

The implementation of ChLOE at Ohio State University provided science teachers with authentic agricultural experiences for integrating agriculture in their classes through a professional development session and field trip with their students. The purpose of this explanatory mixed-methods study is to evaluate the ChLOE’s impact on teacher participants’ knowledge, beliefs, and application of the program content. The quantitative questionnaire indicated that the program was beneficial for students and teachers through the reported implementation of the pedagogies taught during the professional development and immersive experiences during the field trip. The qualitative follow-up interviews indicated that teachers perceived high student engagement during the field trip and a plethora of intended and reported behavior change through the integration of professional development and field trip within the classroom. The expansion on the quantitative results by the qualitative suggests that the behavior changes are congruent with the additional beliefs and knowledge acquired by the teachers throughout the ChLOE program. OSU should align educator programs, including ChLOE, with evolving teacher needs and evaluate student outcomes to ensure relevance to instructional goals. Overall, teacher professional development programs should cater to a variety of teacher needs and curriculum.