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Makale Özeti:
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Informal science educators play a key role in promoting science literacy, safety, and
health by teaching pesticide toxicology to the large, at-risk Latino farmworker
population in the United States (US). To understand the experiences of informal
science educators and the nature of farmworker education, we must have knowledge
of farmworker educators‘ beliefs, yet little is known about these beliefs and how
beliefs about teaching, pesticide risk, and self-efficacy might influence teaching
environments and practices and potentially inform the field of informal science
education. In this exploratory, descriptive case study, we used questionnaires and
interviews to investigate the teaching, pesticide risk, and self-efficacy beliefs of 19
farmworker educators in one southeastern US state, identifying salient personal,
behavioral, and environmental factors that influence beliefs using Bandura‘s (1986)
model of reciprocal determinism. We found that two distinct groups of farmworker
educators emerged based on work affiliation. Health care and advocacy educators
typically had more learner-focused beliefs, greater concern about pesticide risks, and
lower self-efficacy. In contrast, state agency and Cooperative Extension/university
educators expressed more teacher-focused beliefs, less cautious pesticide risk beliefs,
and higher self-efficacy. Three factors emerged as important influences on these
informal educators‘ beliefs: quantity of lessons provided, shared language with
learners, and experience with handling pesticides. Study implications include
recommendations for future work in informal science education research to explore
the role of educators‘ authentic experiences with science, the significance of
educators‘ institutional affiliations, and the prevalence of low self-efficacy among
educators.
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