Abstract:
Today's graduates of colleges of agriculture face many new and unique problems. The question arises, are they adequately prepared to solve these problems? Many critics would say no, and have called for changes in teaching in higher education. The push is on for a more student-centered approach to teaching with a greater emphasis on critical thinking, decision making, problem solving, and leadership. For almost a century secondary agricultural education has relied on a pedagogical model incorporating these ideas. Experiential learning is a foundation of secondary agricultural education and provides students the opportunity to be more engaged in their learning by giving students concrete experiences, which are essential to learning. Experiential learning also forces students to reflect on and generalize about their learning, thus making it more transferable. Students are able to build critical thinking and decision making skills through the hands-on problem based learning activities associated with experiential constructivist epistemologies. The hands-on, experientially driven pedagogical methods inherent in secondary agricultural education provide a constructivist/experiential learning model for undergraduate education. Perhaps, colleges of agriculture should consider implementing the constructivist based, experiential pedagogical model presented to help transform the undergraduate learning experience.
Keywords:
undergraduate learning experiences, student-centered teaching, transform undergraduate agricultural education
 Article5_Nacta_Sept2011.pdf | [ ] | 118 kB |
