Teaching Tomorrow's Leaders in Sustainable Agriculture

Sixty undergraduate students, thirteen graduate students, and eleven high school agriculture teachers from the Upper Midwest participated in the Agroecosystems Analysis field course during the summers of 2005-2008. Participants completed pre-course readings, learned from 8 innovative farmers by visiting their farms, and worked in teams to analyze these farms. Undergraduate and graduate students presented their analyses orally to the class, and also produced a final written report. High school teachers developed course modules in sustainable agriculture and agroecosystems analysis to use in their classroom settings. They presented these modules to the class, and submitted written summaries to the instructors.

Introduction:

Contemporary agriculture is at a crossroads with opposing agents of change vying for influence in determining the future course of agricultural development within the U.S. At the present time much of agriculture is rapidly converting to an industrial model to the detriment of many of the longstanding agrarian values that have existed in this nation. However, alternative agricultural models also exist and offer promising approaches for farmers who seek to live fulfilling, profitable lives without embracing the industrial model. This project (and the Agroecosystems Analysis course around which it is formed) is dedicated to the premise that the advantages of farms that follow alternative approaches towards agricultural sustainability are readily evident, especially so if they can be experienced first-hand.

There is a need to educate students and teachers about economically and environmentally sound alternatives that can and should be implemented on family farms in the North Central region. We believe that this project will help us pursue a path that can lead to a deeper understanding of the concept of sustainability, especially as it is applied to agroecosystems of the region. These changes will help lead to improved profitability and sustainability of farming operations and greater citizen support for alternatives to the industrial model of agriculture.

Many people can identify key teachers who had extraordinary influences on their professional and personal formation as people. Such teachers are often ones who were encountered at the junior or senior high school levels, when students can be particularly open to the formation of life ideals and goals. Although some attention has been given to bringing concepts of sustainability and agroecology to bear within colleges and universities (Francis et al., 2003), relatively little effort has been made to date to assure that these also become a part of secondary curricula and instruction within the U.S. We maintain that helping secondary teachers understand concepts of sustainability, as well as implement experiential learning and problem-based learning pedagogical approaches that lead to transformational learning are essential to influencing tomorrow’s leaders and food system participants. This is also important for the broader education of citizens as well who must support public discourse that foster commitments to sustainable practices in agriculture and otherwise. Providing 21 secondary teachers with the opportunity to experience first hand the active, experiential pedagogies upon which the Agroecosystems Analysis course is founded should provide a substantial impetus for changes in high school curricula and course content within the region. For university students involved in the course, their development of a deeper understanding of agroecosystem functions and the implementation of sustainable practices should lead to agricultural professionals and practitioners who can help sustain the future and enhance the natural resource foundation upon which agriculture depends. For students who do not become agricultural professionals, such understanding should lead to a more informed and active citizenry in the region, particularly in the area of sustainable agriculture.

This project is founded upon the assumption that transformational learning is essential if agriculture, and our culture in general, are to move towards sustainability. This transformational learning will not happen through the conventional, passive, second-hand educational approaches that predominate within secondary (and higher education) systems of the region. Transformational learning shapes people—they are fundamentally different afterwards in ways that both they and others can recognize (Merriam and Caffarella, 1999). It presumes that students, and teachers also, need to encounter “disorienting dilemmas” (i.e. profound events or life experiences) that cause them to acquire new perspectives and skills needed to make meaning of and resolve those dilemmas. Transformational learners are often engaged in significant self-examination and critical assessment of assumptions. This assessment often leads them to new levels of understanding. A transformational learner is usually eager to seek options that lead to constructive action to alleviate the dilemma and to move towards a better situation. Our experience with field-based, experiential, farmer-centered approaches to learning indicates that our students do all of these. (Wiedenhoeft et al., 2003)

Literature Review

Sustainable agricultural practices and systems will only become accepted and implemented in the North Central Region if the next generation of farmers and agricultural leaders are convinced that this represents a viable future for economically and environmentally sound farming. It is essential that we design and introduce sustainable agriculture into the curriculum of high schools, community and four-year colleges, and universities in the region. To date most SARE funded projects have focused on education for farmers. This project concentrates on experiential learning and agroecosystem analysis for college and university students and high school teachers. A second component is working with high school teachers to help them incorporate the concepts of sustainable agriculture and agroecology into curricula at the high school level.

Experiential learning has been the foundation for indigenous education for millennia. People learned by doing, worked as apprentices or alongside their parents or elders in the village, and put this experience into practice. Socrates in the fifth century BC guided his students in the discovery process and search for truth, and his student Plato recorded these ideas and expanded on the quest for order and justice. Aristotle was a student of Plato, and he argued that form and matter were inseparable and experience was central to learning. Through the church and the renaissance emerged the concept of sermons, lectures and universities, and our educational systems today still labor within the paradigm of authority figures and one-way communication. John Dewey (1938) was an early proponent of experience as fundamental to the learning process, and his friend Eduard Lindeman (1961) built on this theory. He argued that to be most effective, learning should not be constrained by classrooms and formal curricula.

Our goal is to offer alternatives to that dominant paradigm. We know that people accumulate experiences and use them as a foundation upon which to place new knowledge and ideas, consistent with the constructivist description of education (Merriam and Caffarella, 1990). Practical internships, field experiences, and tours are already components of many of our courses, yet we have all been on field trips that turn into lectures by the instructor or the farmer in the setting of the farm. More relevant to our proposal are the capstone and other broad courses that use problem-based learning by groups of students who deal with real-world situations and come up with solutions or alternative scenarios. These learning approaches are used in a wide array of courses in agriculture, including biological engineering (Christy et al., 2000), food science (Murano and Knight, 1999), agroforestry (Roush et al., 1999), agricultural education (Trede and Andreasen, 2000), and natural resources conservation (Arthur and Thompson, 1999).

Experience in the Nordic Region with experiential education has led to the development of a new MSc curriculum in Agroecology. Much of the learning is accomplished in the field, with experiences that complement the prior reading, discussions, and team research on relevant topics (Lieblein et al., 1999). The potential to expand the concept of agroecology to include the entire food system has been described (Francis et al., 2003) and practical applications in Norway have been tested using experiential field courses (Lieblein et al., 2001). We have extrapolated from this learning model to suggest a design for future agricultural universities and colleges that could conduct much of the experiential education off the campus in the rural landscape and communities (Lieblein et al., 2000).

Based on the Nordic experience and active-learning field trips here in the Midwest we have designed a highly-effective summer travel course in a three-state area (Wiedenhoeft et al., 2003). Based on principles of hands-on learning, farmers as instructors, and small group interaction we have squeezed an incredible amount of experience and learning into one week. Students read and summarize articles and book chapters in preparation for an intensive week of farm visits and group work, present their preliminary findings at the end of the week, and complete a group report and individual learner document over the course of another month. From students evaluations we find that this course is one of the best they have taken at the university level, and the reason is the practical orientation and incorporation of farmers as instructors in the course. In this new proposal, we intend to provide the same learning experience for high school agriculture, biology, and environmental science teachers, with the additional goal of helping them develop plans and curricular materials for use with their high school students in succeeding years.

References

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