Abstracts Category : Other

Identification of Learning Outcomes and Development ofAssessment Methods for Agricultural Safety and Health Content inSecondary Agricultural Education Classrooms

by Andrew J Mann

The problem in agricultural safety and healtheducation for youth is that there is a lack of evidence-basedassessment tools to quantify comprehension of content prior toworking in agriculture. Agricultural educators, both those inmiddle and high school classrooms and teacher educators at collegesand universities need educational resources, easy access to theseresources, and assessment strategies for agricultural safety andhealth content. As role models, these educators play an importantrole in establishing a culture of safety and instilling safe workbehaviors in their learners. The purpose of this research was toincrease cognitive assessment strategies for agricultural safetyand health content taught in agricultural classrooms. Thisobjective was achieved by evaluating learning outcomes developed tosatisfy federal regulation, describing the tasks that youth arecompleting as part of their Supervised Agricultural Experience(SAE), and developing two databases with 202 total exam items.Chapters two and three provided foundational information that wasmissing in the literature, and Chapter four of this dissertationbuilt on the USDA-NIFA supported Safety in Agriculture for Youth(SAY) project where a primary objective was to develop aclearinghouse to provide access as a one stop shop for agriculturalsafety and health content. The U.S. Department of Labor (U.S. DOL)oversees the Agricultural Hazardous Occupations Orders (AgHOs),which identifies specific tasks that youth are prohibited fromperforming for hire on American farms and ranches. An educationalexemption from this public policy is currently in place that allowsyouth, 1415 years old, to complete a certification program priorto engaging in agricultural work involving tractors and machinery.However, limited guidance is provided in the legislation regardingthe format or content of the tractor and machinery certificationexemption. Four AgHOs (tractor and machinery) studies wereidentified and included in the Chapter two meta-analysispublication. The research goals of this analysis were to determinebasic trends of learning outcomes, and identify educational contentto be delivered as a result of these studies. Within each of thefour studies, expert panels were used to identify educationallearning outcomes. The analysis revealed that 48.0% (n = 184) ofall learning outcome items fell within the Tractor-based (Tractor)learning outcome category, 29.8% (n = 114) within General Safetyand Health (General), and 22.2% (n = 85) of items in theMachinery-based (Machinery) category.School-based AgriculturalEducation (SBAE) is one nationally structured approached toproviding both education and experiential learning in agriculturalcontexts. The SBAE model consists of three intersecting components,comprised of classroom/laboratory instruction, career and technicalorganizations, and work-based learning. A lack of empirical datahas been found describing the specific agricultural tasks youthwere actually completing as part of their SAE. DescriptiveAdvisors/Committee Members: Jepsen, S. Dee (Advisor).