Background and Aim: This work present the implementation of animal husbandry teaching in an interdisciplinary curriculum based on the One health concept. The study describes learners point of view about the course involvement in the curriculum. The study was aimed to build an improved teaching model.
Materials and Methods: For the experiment, fourteen (14) learners (all professionals) participated to individual semi-structured interviews lasting 25 - 35 minutes. Learners opinions were extracted from the transcripted interviews, tied together according to the anchored theorization method, in order to release learners feelings, and new comprehensions.
Results: The study demonstrated the relevancy and the integration of animal husbandry course in the curriculum. It appears that methodological approaches must be emphasized together with the course orientation, course content, challenging skills, practical useful tools and learner motivation. It was identified that, in an interdisciplinary curriculum, to improve skills development and orientation in teaching methods, must be considered: learners profiles, their expectations and background. The thinking line for the teaching model improvement may concern health facts case study, field analysis-based-learning, and nutrition drifting effects, from the farm to the fork.
Conclusion
The curriculum offers, for learners, higher capacity for new knowledge appropriation and integration. The teaching methods, based on team work and active learning, allow to learners a great ability for working with other profiles, and increase their capacity in sharing knowledge.
The integration of a teaching unit in an interdisciplinary curriculum can be assimilated to a complex system that delivers, according to learners perceptions, some guiding lines to perform the system. Introduction in the course design, target topics and interrelation, target skills, are important and must be clearly identified and clarified, well established, and directly related to the course content. Skills-oriented and Content-oriented integration are the highlighted methodologies to perform the system.
Key words: animal husbandry, interdisciplinarity, one health, curriculum
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