Home > Themes > Future farming > Visit to a lavender farm

Class case study: Visit to a lavender farm

Key Messages
The value of the visit appeared to derive from

A shared a belief in the value of industry-school links

A shared understanding of the specific learning purposes of the visit
The farmers enthusiasm, timing and structuring of the material presented
The teachers management of the visit - students were aware of the intended
learning outcomes and the focus was on these for the duration of the visit.
The students were well supervised.
The visit took place near the beginning of the unit. The teacher made links
between what the farmer had said during subsequent lessons.

Class and teacher background

There were 21 Year 9 students in the class. They had each elected to take
biotechnology as a module for technology. Their teacher, Katy, was an experienced
teacher with a background in horticulture and an interest in environmental education
and biotechnology education. She taught science, horticulture and biology at the
school.

Why choose lavender oil?

Katy originally chose the topic because lavender oil was an up and coming niche
market product with a local producer. Lavender is also easy to grow, and learning
outcomes and activities to do with the propagation and cultivation of lavender are
included in the unit, which ran for ten weeks. Typically, Katy taught the unit in the
first and fourth terms when students could grow lavender and distil some lavender oil
using flowers from the school garden or a local lavender farm.

The unit had two broad foci:

The propagation of lavender for aromatherapy, including methods of

propagation, techniques for maximising growth and flower production, and
consideration of which species produced the best quality lavender oil quality
The production, properties, storage and packaging of lavender oil.

Assessment
The unit included four assessment tasks:
1.
2.
3.
4.

A review of lavender propagation methods

The production of lavender cuttings
A survey of lavender usage
A research project on techniques for the production of lavender oil and the
production of bottled lavender oil.

2005-2009 The University of Waikato

www.biotechlearn.org.nz

Home > Themes > Future farming > Visit to a lavender farm

Biotechnology focus
For Katy, biotechnology involves the modification of living things to produce a
product that is of benefit to humans. The product does not necessarily have to be
living. In her view, the benefits gained by people provide the reason for undertaking
the modification/ manipulation. Katy saw the distillation of lavender oil as the key
biotechnological activity within the unit since it involved the processing of lavender
flowers to produce lavender oil that has therapeutic properties.

The purpose of the field trip

The field trip to the lavender farm was used to introduce students to the sequence of
lessons focusing on the extraction of oil from the lavender flowers before it could be
bottled and packaged.

Planning the field trip

Katy believes that there are several key factors in organising a successful field trip:

When she first contacts an outside expert, she is careful to explain why she
wants to visit their and what she intends the students to learn.
If the expert expresses an interest in being involved, she sends them a copy
of her unit so that they were aware of the overall goals and objectives of the
unit and how the visit to their site contributed to these.
She seeks feedback about what and how the expert thinks they could
contribute to the unit goals, and negotiates with them the actual purpose of a
visit so that she and the industry person had a common understanding of
student learning purposes for the visit.
Katy deliberately set up visits with people who were good communicators.
She usually visits the business prior to the first student visit to ensure that
the businessperson is likely to be welcoming and able to talk with a group of
adolescents.
Because she is constrained by the school timetable it is important that the
industry person had some flexibility to negotiate the time of a visit
Katy is also careful not to take students who might be disruptive, so that the
visit is a positive experience for all involved. She and any other accompanying
adults always take full responsibility for student behaviour
To ensure that the students are aware of the goals for a visit, Katy handed out
a question sheet. The questions also related to an assessment task for the
unit.

The topics covered by the lavender farmer included:

A welcome and outline for the visit.

How and why the farm had been set up, and how plants are sourced and
propagated (in the field). How flowers are hand-cut to ensure high quality oil
(demonstration).
The quality and quantity of oil produced by the two plant species that were
grown (in the field).

2005-2009 The University of Waikato

www.biotechlearn.org.nz

Home > Themes > Future farming > Visit to a lavender farm

Preparation of flowers for distilling. The distillation process (in the distilling
room).
Range of lavender-based products (in the shop).

Message
The visit was broken up into segments where the lavender farmer would speak,
students could discuss the ideas and ask questions, and then the group would move
to a different location. This helped to keep students attention.

Links between class activities and the field trip

After the visit, Katy and the students discussed what the lavender farmer had told
them. As the students researched lavender oil production, they related the pictures
in the resource books to the extraction equipment they had seen. While they were
designing the labeling and packaging for the lavender oil the students recalled the
farmers explanation for why brown or blue bottles were necessary and how lavender
could be used.

Acknowledgements
This visit was observed and reported on by Dr. Bronwen Cowie from the Centre for
Science & Technology Education Research, University of Waikato. The study was
commissioned by the Ministry of Research, Science & Technology as part of a study
into biotechnology.

2005-2009 The University of Waikato

www.biotechlearn.org.nz