WWW.WA S .ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • SEP TEMBER 2022 63 ( C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 6 4 ) toward STEM and developing an interest in STEM disciplines and/ or STEM career pursuits. Some students developed an interest in aquaculture fields after participating in the project. Conclusions An aquaculture education is an ideal vehicle to facilitate the integration of academic and vocational subject matter when infused into secondary or other agriculture curriculum (Conroy and Walker 2000). Aquaculture is an effective teaching tool because it easily integrates many disciplines, including biology, chemistry, economics, math and physics, and can provide handson experiences that complement academic theory (Conroy and Peaslely 1997, El-Ghamrini 1996, Wingenbach, 2000). Aquaculture provides experiential science and mathematics education to help meet demands for cross-curricular integration (Conroy and Walker 2000). Agriculture is by nature a practical discipline and would seem to be a perfect match for integration into the science curriculum (Mabie and Baker 1996). This provided the basis for using aquaculture to create a STEM-related PBI experience. Actively engaging students in practical tasks that focus on real-world problems they investigate in the classroom provides learners unique experiential learning opportunities. Students investigated, analyzed, and communicated their carrying capacity findings in an aquaculture context. In doing so, students were able to get in touch with basic STEM concepts and skills as they connected with aquaculture and aquaponics. Likewise, students were given opportunities to work in small groups and were assigned a job similar to what a STEMworker might do in the field. Weekly job rotations allowed students to experience and master tasks assigned to each job. These experiences allowed students to practice teamwork, develop communication skills and gain responsibility. Overall, students took ownership of their learning while investigating, exploring, analyzing, interpreting, and reflecting among their peers the tasks at hand, which fostered positive learning outcomes. Acknowledgments We thank Bailey Vandiver for editing the manuscript and Charles Weibel and Nathan Cochran for assistance with figures. This work was supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture 1890 Capacity Building Program, award #2017-38821-26442. This project was also in partial fulfillment of Kenneth Thompson’s Ph.D. dissertation submitted to the College of Education at the University of Kentucky. Director and dissertation chair was Dr. Rebecca Krall. Other committee members included Drs. Jennifer Wilhelm, Kiluba Nkulu and Kenneth Jones. Notes Kenneth R. Thompson, Division of Aquaculture, Kentucky State University, Frankfort, KY, USA ken.thompson@kysu.edu Carl D. Webster, USDA-ARS Harry K. Dupree Stuttgart National Aquaculture Research Center, Stuttgart, AR, USA carl.webster@ usda.gov Kirk W. Pomper, College of Agriculture, Community, and the Sciences, Kentucky State University, Frankfort, KY, USA kirk. pomper@kysu.edu Jim H. Tidwell, Division of Aquaculture, Kentucky State University, Frankfort, KY, USA James.tidwell@kysu.edu Rebecca M. Krall, Department of Education, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA rebecca.krall@uky.edu References Barker, B., G. Nugent and N. Grandgenett. 2014. Examining fidelity of program implementation in a STEM-oriented out-ofschool setting. International Journal of Technology and Design Education 24(1):39-52. Basu, S.J. and A.C. Barton. 2007. Developing a sustained interest in science among urban minority youth. Journal of Research in Science Teaching 44(3):466-489. Bell, P., B. Lewenstein, A.W. Shouse and M.A. Feder, eds. 2009. Learning Science in Informal Environments: People, Places, and Pursuits. Washington DC: National Academic Press. Bouillion, L.M. and L.M. Gomez. 2001. Connecting school and community with science learning: Real world problems and school-community partnerships as contextual scaffolds. Journal of Research in Science Teaching 38:878-898. FIGURE 5. Pre- and post-intervention survey instrument comparison with respect to the three treatment groups (N = 55). An aquaculture education is an ideal vehicle to facilitate the integration of academic and vocational subject matter when infused into secondary or other agriculture curriculum. Aquaculture is an effective teaching tool because it easily integrates many disciplines, including biology, chemistry, economics, math and physics, and can provide hands-on experiences that complement academic theory. Aquaculture provides experiential science and mathematics education to help meet demands for cross-curricular integration.
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