Food Safety Education for High School and Transition Special Needs Students

NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY: Special needs youth and adolescents from high school through transition are required to have access not only to general education curriculum, but also to life skills instruction that promote independence and self-determination. Current curriculum has not been designed for instruction relating to food safety principles and practices for this target audience. Food safety knowledge is a necessary part of life skills mandate and directly impact the health and safety of this target group. The purpose of this project will be to develop food safety education materials for use by special education teachers who work with high school and transition students.
<P>
APPROACH: A needs assessment survey of high school and transition special education teachers in the participating states will assess the demographics, food safety knowledge and attitudes toward food safety issues of special needs teachers. In addition, it will assess resource tools, if any, teachers use to teach food preparation skills to students. All special needs educators in the participating states will be targeted for the survey, which will be administered using the Dillman Total Design Method. Survey content validity and reliability will be ascertained prior to distribution. Descriptive statistics, t-test and ANOVA will be used for data evaluation. The knowledge content area and item means will be ranked to identify the major educational and curriculum needs. Using the results of the needs assessment, food safety curriculum and resource materials will be developed/modified for special needs teachers for use in their classrooms and for integration into identified programs at universities and/or colleges in the participating states. Prior to design or modification of food safety curriculum, special needs teachers will be solicited for their input as to the format that would be best suited to their needs and the needs of their students. With guidance from the project education experts, food safety educational materials will be developed and reviewed. Food safety educational resources will have key strategies and performance targets. Teachers will be recruited through the survey and by the project educational partners as participants in a pilot implementation of new and/or modified curriculum reflecting food safety in life skills competencies. As part of an in-service to familiarize teachers with the food safety education resources/curriculum for special needs students, food safety education will also be developed for the special needs teachers with emphasis on the weak knowledge areas identified by the survey. The effectiveness of the pilot outreach program will be determined through creation and implementation of evaluation tools that measure student knowledge gain and/or behavioral change. A student survey will be developed for the assessment of student knowledge based on food safety identified in the 4 Fight Bac content areas using pre- and post-testing. In one participating state, data will also be obtained through behavioral analysis through direct observation and will be compared to the written knowledge assessment. Food safety education modules developed, as part of this project, will be incorporated into undergraduate and graduate education programs that offer courses for special needs teachers at educational institutions in the partnering states. Finally, project directors will facilitate expansion of the educational materials developed by notifying those high school and transition resource teachers that did not participate in the pilot program of the availability of the food safety life skills resource materials. Working with state partners, food safety specialists will coordinate other in-service opportunities for additional teachers that would like this assistance.<P>PROGRESS: 2005/09 TO 2010/08<BR/>
OUTPUTS: All outputs that were proposed in the project have been completed and the results of this project have been fully disseminated. A teacher needs assessment was completed for RI, CT and MA teachers of special needs students and the results of this survey was used to verify the need and direct the specific outputs for outreach programming, training and curriculum development. In addition, teacher "roundtable" discussions and advisory committee experts were engaged to help direct the final format of all resources. As a result of this successful partnership and collaboration among Cooperative Extension food safety experts, University/College special education and nutrition experts, special education teachers from the three states, and a RI state education collaborative, the "Food Safety Smart Curriculum", targeting food safety education for high school and transition special needs students, was developed, pilot tested, revised and finalized. The curriculum contains 7 units based on the Fight Bac principles: Student Overview (Unit 1), Microworld (Unit 2), Clean (Unit 3), Separate (Unit 4), Cook (Unit 5), Chill (Unit 6) and Putting It All Together (Unit 7).The Food Safety Smart curriculum was designed (including lesson outlines/outcomes, teaching options, student activities and assessments) to address the diverse learning requirements and/or capabilities of special needs students. Resource materials (2 CD's containing the teacher in-service training PowerPoint, curriculum in PDF format, interactive food safety PowerPoint for students, picture photofile, PowerPoint training for foodservice applications, bacterial growth illustration PowerPoint and observation guide for teacher assessment of student food safety practices and a DVD video illustrating correct and incorrect food safety behaviors) were also successfully developed. Teacher in-service was implemented as part of the pilot program. All resources are currently available prepackaged (curriculum, 2 CD's and DVD) for purchase or as a free download on the URI food safety website (http://www.uri.edu/ce/ceec/foodsafety.shtml). In addition, a one-day conference was conducted on April 7, 2010, to promote the new curriculum to teachers of special needs students. "Teaching Tools for Living: Introducing the Food safety Smart Curricula Model for Teaching Life Skills" workshop was attended by 53 participants. Finally, national distribution of the curriculum and its resource materials was accomplished by sending one copy of the CD/DVD set to a least one Land Grant Cooperative Extension Food Safety Contact. In addition, a letter was sent to all special education, state Departments of Education, contacts indicating the availability of the new food safety curriculum. Presentations were also incorporated into courses at the Universities of Massachusetts and Connecticut and Rhode Island College. During the program duration, presentations were made at national and regional conferences such as: NIFSI Director's Meeting, July, 2009, Grapevine, TX; USDA, and the USDA Food Safety Conference, 3/2010, Atlanta Georgia. Presentations have continued beyond the end date of this project. PARTICIPANTS: All state project directors have been involved in this project per the scope of work as articulated in the original project proposal and documented in previous project reports. Advisory groups were formed and, in addition to the state directors, included representatives from experts in special education from university/colleges, state education collaborative, non-profit agency and special needs, FCS and/or transition center teachers. Without the partnerships with the advisory group members and the special education teachers in CT, MA and RI, who participated in the pilot program, this project would not have been a success. Project activities required teacher involvement: reviewing existing curriculum materials, and/or piloting and evaluating the curriculum in their classrooms. Those teachers that participated in the pilot program were provided with in-service and on-going assistance from the project directors. Individuals directly involved in curriculum development and not previously acknowledged: Marti Breau, MBA, RD, Food Safety Specialist, Consultant, Kids First Curriculum Contributor State Advisory Committee Members: Connecticut Lisa Amato, Abby Dolliver, Pati Harper, Doreen Marvin, LEARN, Regional Educational Service Center Massachusetts Rita Brennan Olsen, Nutrition Education and Training Coordinator, School Nutrition and Health, Massachusetts Department of Education Judy K. Flohr, EdD, Senior Lecturer, Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management, University of Massachusetts Paul Rilla, Executive Director, Steve Dion, Principal, Tri-County Schools, Lou Giramma, Director Program Services, Susan Tallon, Culinary Arts Manager, North East Center for Youth and Families Rhode Island Betsy Dalton, MEd, Assistant Professor Special Education and Assistive Technology, Paul W. Sherlock Center on Disabilities, Rhode Island College Maureen DeCrescenzo, Director of Special Services, Exeter/West Greenwich School District, retired. Currently, Professional Development Coordinator, Southern Rhode Island Collaborative. Kathi Masi, Family and Consumer Sciences Teacher, South Kingstown High School Edie Monhan, Teacher/Coordinator, R.I. Transition Academy, Community College of Rhode Island, West Bay Collaborative Alice Woods, Regional Transition Coordinator, The Southern Rhode Island Collaborative Education and Training Center <BR/>TARGET AUDIENCES: The primary target audience was special needs students in high school and transition centers. The secondary target audience, teachers of special needs students, also required in-service and training regarding basic food safety principles and the use and implementation of the curriculum. As indicated, efforts included in-service training, curriculum development and day-long conference. Finally, the food safety curriculum was presented to undergraduate and graduate education majors in university/college classes that focused on special education.
<P>
IMPACT: 2005/09 TO 2010/08 <BR/>
During the pilot, 132 students received the curriculum. All participating teachers (N=23, 18 classrooms) were asked to complete the Clean Unit and two other units of their choosing. Program effectiveness was determined by student pre/post tests (N=121), and student (N=97) and teacher evaluations (N= 19). Paired-t test showed significant gain (p<0.05) of student knowledge for all units with an average of 15 percentage points for each unit: Microworld, 47% to 60% (N=96); Clean, 52% to 67% (N=120); Separate, 53% to 70% (N=111); Cook, 49% to 66% (N=67) and Chill, 46% to 58% (N=70). Overall, teachers rated the curriculum 4.5 with a 0.2 standard deviation (5-point scale), with individual unit ratings from 4.2 to 4.7. The teachers that participated in the pilot program extensively reviewed the curriculum. This evaluation provided the information necessary to revise the curriculum to further correspond with the needs of teachers working with special needs students. Student evaluations showed that 91% of the students indicated they enjoyed learning about food safety, 97% learned about cleaning food preparation areas before cooking, 96% indicated they learned about keeping hot foods hot and cold foods cold and the majority (69%) enjoyed the activities. The overall evaluation of the conference (N=36) was 4.0 out of 5.0 (1=strongly disagree, 5=strongly agree). Some key responses to the evaluation indicated that a there was strong agreement that the teachers who attended this conference would be integrating part or all of the curriculum into their lesson plans during the 2010/2011 academic year and that they would be sharing the curriculum and information from the conference with their colleagues. Respondents indicated that the Food Safety Smart curriculum would fulfill a need for appropriate food safety teaching materials for special needs students.