Engaging with Tasmanian Agriculture Teachers on Food and Fibre
March 16, 2023
As part of this year’s ACIAR funded NextGen project, the Crawford Fund is holding workshops and webinars for teachers to assist with their use of our free “Development for a Better Future” teaching modules. We have recently contacted all key national and State teacher associations across agriculture, geography, design tech, science and more to engage with teachers around our updated free set of seven teaching materials which now all have assessment tools, and on our school competition. Most recently, our education consultant, Heather MacDonald of Education Partnerships, held a webinar on our resources for Tasmanian agriculture teachers, which followed on from our workshop at the National Association of Agricultural Educators earlier in the year. Here’s Heather’s report on the webinar. There’s more workshops and webinars to come so please do contact us if you are a teacher and would like more info.
Food and Nutrition Security is an active discussion point across the community and school classrooms around the globe. How are we going to sustainably feed the world? For school students, it is a hot topic, and the Crawford Fund has developed curriculum aligned resources and assessment rubrics to support educators embed contemporary case studies from the Asia Pacific into their classroom.
On 3 March, I delivered a webinar to Agriculture Teachers in Tasmania on how the Crawford Fund resources – Development for a Better Future are addressing the Food and Fibre content of the Design and Technology Curriculum (ANC V9).
The discussions and sharing throughout the webinar highlighted the desire by educators to have access to contemporary materials, scientifically based case studies and authentic learning for students focussed on the Asia Pacific region. Referencing the updated Australian National Curriculum V9 also supported educators to embed the resources into their classrooms for engaging and purposeful learning.
The webinar was a precursor to two workshops I will be running for the Crawford Fund in Launceston and Hobart on 7th and 8th June.
The resources are FREE for schools, and students and educators are encouraged to share their wisdom and ideas with us. To encourage student voice, schools are encouraged to enter their students’ work in the Crawford Fund competition with a prize of $1000. The Crawford Fund would also like to showcase student work to key stakeholders in Australia and hopefully also at the UN World Food Forum in Rome in October 2023.
The resources have an emphasis on critical and creative thinking and problem solving throughout the modules to excite educators and students about the impact of work around food and nutrition security and highlight career pathways for students.
Thank you to the Department for Education, Children and Young People for the opportunity to present to their members during a professional learning day – hearing how the materials have impact within schools is really encouraging!
The topics of the teaching materials are all significant areas of challenge and innovation in addressing food and nutrition security. They are-
- Climate Change and Food and Nutrition Security
- Climate-Smart Technologies
- Covid-19 and Food and Nutrition Security
- Australia – A Powerhouse of Agriculture Research
- Gender Dimensions in Agriculture
- Genebanks – Saving more than Seeds
- Food Loss and Waste
I’m also looking forward to presenting a workshop at the upcoming conference of the Primary Industry Education Foundation of Australia in early May.
