Using the Discipline of Agricultural Engineering to Integrate Math and Science

Abstract

An outcome of a 1998 forum sponsored by the National Research Council was a recognition that topics related to food production and agriculture are excellent mechanisms for integrating science topics taught in the K-12 education system and for providing many avenues for inquiry based and project based learning. The engineering design process is also an excellent mechanism that can engage and integrate both math and science topics. From this perspective, faculty from the University of Georgia in collaboration with Jackson County School District in the State of Georgia developed workshop where the goals was to use a problem-based learning theme that is often engaged by agricultural engineers and to use this theme to integrate math and science horizontally and vertically throughout the middle school and high school curricula. Overall, the entire collaborative project has helped to improve significantly middle school CRCT scores and high school End-of-Course grades in math and physical science.