Project Overview
Commodities
Practices
Proposal abstract:
In June 2023, PCA staff attending the California Agricultural
Teachers Association (CATA) uncovered a pressing need: educators
sought compelling horticulture materials for fostering
environmental stewardship. This revelation underscores the PCA's
mission to bridge this educational gap, providing engaging,
bilingual resources that focus heavily on sustainable practices,
aligning with California's future agricultural landscape.
The PCA, in collaboration with the California Foundation for
Agriculture in the Classroom (CFAITC), proposes to develop a
horticulture curriculum unit and train high school agriculture
teachers to use the curriculum to incorporate sustainable
principals into their horticulture programs. Existing study
materials from the California Certified Nursery Professional (CCN
Pro) program will be used as the foundation for developing a
curriculum framework. The curriculum will be created through the
collaboration of high school educators with input and feedback
from stakeholders in the nursery industry. The materials will
also be translated into Spanish to support the 45,000 California
agriculture students that are Hispanic/Latino.
Once the curriculum is developed, CFAITC will promote the unit to
their extensive network of more than 12,000 educators and
numerous agriculture, environmental, and education organizations
throughout the state. PCA and CFAITC will conduct a
curriculum-based training webinar and facilitate regional and
statewide in-person workshops to equip teachers to use the
curriculum with confidence in their classrooms.
Project objectives from proposal:
The objectives of this project are to 1) improve agriculture
teachers’ competency in training horticulture students in
sustainable principles and practices; 2) increase teachers’
confidence in delivering the related curriculum; and 3) enhance
teachers' access to sustainability-integrated horticulture
materials.
We'll gauge these objectives through a comprehensive pre- and
post-event Likert scale survey, ensuring a data-driven approach
to measure our impact and effectiveness. Additionally, follow-up
interviews will help the project collaborators gather qualitative
data and determine additional outcomes of the project.