Massey Launches Ag and Hort Courses for Teachers

Part of the new science curriculum, which comes into effect in 2028, includes a focus on soil, plant and animal science. To that end Massey University, in association with the Horticulture and Agriculture Teachers Association (HATA), have been busy designing courses that will upskill teachers to cope with the new requirements of the curriculum.

Leading the project to design these courses at Massey is Professor Chris Anderson, who says an exciting part of the reforms is that ag and hort will be taught to students in year 11 and this will continue through years 12 and 13.

In recent years there has been increasing demand by students for secondary schools to offer agriculture and horticulture, but one issue has been having teachers with the appropriate knowledge and skills to teach these subjects.

For some time, Massey University and HATA have been developing courses for teachers and some have already been run and the aim, says Anderson, is to have a suite of seven different ones on offer.

"We have already been running the soil science course and now we have two plant science and two hort crop courses, which will be offered for the first time. Then we have two animal science courses that we will have ready for next term, and finally an ag business course that will flesh things out," he says.

Anderson says the courses are introductory and are based on the 100-university level. He says they are targeted for teachers so they can get some robust, fit-for-purpose development to help them provide a better teaching experience. The courses are designed to be engaging and include some short videos but don't contain heavy technical detail.

"It's about providing the appropriate level of information the teachers would need to make them more confident when they get in front of the students, and then they are hopefully going to incentivise and excite the kids.

"In the long term, this is about making kids understand that ag is a cool subject and also increase their capability when they come to the university," he says.

All the individual courses are being delivered online over a ten-week period with participants expected to put in about five hours work per week and fifty hours over the ten weeks.