Sociocultural tensions and wicked problems in sustainable agriculture education (original) (raw)
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Students Creating Curriculum Change: Sustainable Agriculture and Social Justice
Journal of Critical Thought and Praxis
As the sustainable agriculture movement in the U.S. evolves, it faces the challenges of integration and inclusivity. Including social justice questions within sustainable agriculture education facilitates broader discussions about inequality and who benefits from this education and its practice. In this article, we present a case study in which we share our process and lessons learned from our student-led effort to integrate social justice work within the sustainable agriculture graduate curriculum at a Midwest public land-grant university. We analyze different sources and data to discuss: a) how students' efforts can lead to curriculum development, change, and implementation; b) how integrating social justice within sustainable agriculture curricula can fulfill existing gaps in content and pedagogy; and c) professional and personal lessons learned from this process. Conclusions and recommendations center on how programs undergoing or considering embarking on similar endeavors can learn from our efforts.
Agriculture and Human Values, 2007
Historically, land grant universities and their colleges of agriculture have been discipline driven in both their curricula and research agendas. Critics call for interdisciplinary approaches to undergraduate curriculum. Concomitantly, sustainable agriculture (SA) education is beginning to emerge as a way to address many complex social and environmental problems. University of California at Davis faculty, staff, and students are developing an undergraduate SA major. To inform this process, a web-based Delphi survey of academics working in fields related to SA was conducted. Faculty from colleges and universities across the US were surveyed. Participants suggested that students needed knowledge of natural and social science disciplines relating to the agri-food system. In addition, stakeholders suggested students learn through experiences that link the classroom to field work, engaging a broad range of actors within applied settings. Stakeholders also emphasized the need for interdisciplinary and applied scholarship. Additionally, they proposed a range of teaching and learning approaches, including many practical experiences. Given the diverse suggestions of content knowledge and means of producing knowledge, the survey presented unique challenges and called into question the epistemological and pedagogical norms currently found in land grant colleges of agriculture. This study has implications for land grant universities seeking to develop undergraduate curriculum appropriate to the field of SA.
National reform documents suggest that changing pedagogical and assessment practices in college science courses are necessary but challenging steps to help support the formation of science identities. This dissertation is a collection of three separate research manuscripts that examined the challenges and affordances of designing and enacting curriculum and assessment practices in an upper-level agroecology course titled, Advanced Practices of Sustainable Agriculture. All three studies integrate theoretical lenses of situated learning, communities of practice, and identity and agency in cultural worlds to support and describe the process of science identity formation. Five instructors and thirteen students participated in the research process. During the fifteen-week semester in the Fall of 2013, pre/post narrative interviews, weekly instructor planning sessions, weekly classes, student assignments, and course artifacts were collected. Interviews were transcribed and remaining data ...
Taking the sustainable agriculture challenge: recontextualizing rural sociology
2009
Agroecosystems Analysis (SusAg 509), a required course for all majors in Iowa State University's Graduate Program in Sustainable Agriculture, provides an immersion experience in the situated challenges of sustainable agriculture. The field portion of SusAg 509, which takes place every year during the first two weeks of August, brings students face-to-face with different understandings of sustainability and the diverse complexity of Midwestern agriculture. Dialogue and reflection turn the raw stuff of experience into learning, as students discover the power and validity of multiple perspectives. More than two dozen site visits help make abstract concepts, such as the economy and social relationships, real. The course succeeds (based on evidence such as capacity enrollments, course evaluations, and program exit interviews) because of its problem-focus and immediacy: it engages the real world, as it is now, not as it has become institutionalized in disciplinary departments. One cha...
Agriculture and Human Values, 2013
In this paper we use a critically reflexive research approach to analyze our efforts to implement transformative learning in food systems education in a land grant university by applying scholarly tools to the teaching processes and its learning outcomes. As a team of learners across the educational hierarchy, we evaluate our efforts of creating transformational learning outcomes through facilitating students' inquiries in Food Systems,!an interdisciplinary, lower division undergraduate!course at the University of California, Davis, and part of a new!undergraduate!major in!Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems. !We provide an overview of the course's core elements -labs, exams, assignments, and lectures -as they relate to social constructivist learning theory and student-centered inquiries. Then, through qualitative analysis of students' reflective essays about their learning experiences in the course, we demonstrate important transformative outcomes of student-centered inquiries: (1) most students confronted the commodity fetish and tried to reconcile tensions between what the food system!is!and!ought!to be, and (2) students repositioned themselves, their thinking, and social deliberation in relation to the food system. Students' reflections point to the power of learning that emerges through their inquiry process, including in the field, and from critical self-reflection. We also highlight the importance of!reflective essays in!both reinforcing experiential learning and!in helping us better understand students' learning vis-àvis our teaching.
Cultivating Pedagogy for Transformative Learning: A Decade of Undergraduate Agroecology Education
Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 2021
Existing scholarship on agroecology and food systems education within U.S. colleges and universities has focused primarily on preparing students to be professionals working in agrifood systems. Developing students' skills and competencies, though vitally important, may not suffice for supporting transformative learning. Transformative learning shifts students' perceptions and awareness and informs future actions, constituting a potential avenue for leveraging education to support transformations toward more socially just and ecologically viable agrifood systems. It is unclear, however, what pedagogies and educational practices enable transformative learning. This paper explores the integration of multiple pedagogical innovations within an advanced agroecology course taught at the University of Vermont. Over a decade, the teaching team has made iterative adjustments to course content and pedagogies with the goal of catalyzing action toward transforming agrifood systems. In th...
Taking the Sustainable Agriculture Challenge: Recontextualizing Rural SOCIOLOGY1 Betty L. Wells
SOUTHERN RURAL SOCIOLOGY, 2009
Agroecosystems Analysis (SusAg 509), a required course for all majors in Iowa State University's Graduate Program in Sustainable Agriculture, provides an immersion experience in the situated challenges of sustainable agriculture. The field portion of SusAg 509, which takes place every year during the first two weeks of August, brings students face-to-face with different understandings of sustainability and the diverse complexity of Midwestern agriculture. Dialogue and reflection turn the raw stuff of experience into learning, as students discover the power and validity of multiple perspectives. More than two dozen site visits help make abstract concepts, such as the economy and social relationships, real. The course succeeds (based on evidence such as capacity enrollments, course evaluations, and program exit interviews) because of its problem-focus and immediacy: it engages the real world, as it is now, not as it has become institutionalized in disciplinary departments. I would like to acknowledge my co-teachers, especially Gretchen Zdorkowski who has been 1
Elem Sci Anth, 2017
Undergraduate courses provide valuable opportunities to train and empower students with the knowledge, skills, and motivation to advance society in more sustainable directions. This article emphasizes the value of bridging primary scientific research with undergraduate education through the presentation of an integrated experiential learning and primary research model called Farm-based Authentic Research Modules in Sustainability Sciences (FARMS). FARMS are collaboratively designed with agricultural stakeholders through a community needs assessment on pressing food system issues and opportunities with the objective for faculty and students to jointly identify evidence-based management solutions. We illustrate the implementation of FARMS in an undergraduate course in Ecological Agriculture at Dartmouth College, NH where students assessed various agroecological solutions for managing plant vitality, weeds, soil quality, pests, pollinators, and biodiversity at the Dartmouth Organic Farm. Student reflections indicate that the FARMS course component was beneficial for understanding agroecological theories and concepts while also motivating involvement in sustainability sciences despite the challenges of primary research. Educator reflections noted that the FARMS pedagogical approach facilitated achieving course objectives to develop students' ability for systems thinking, critical thinking, and interdisciplinarity while fostering students' collaboration skills and overall motivation for creating change. Adopting the FARMS model should enable faculty in the sustainability sciences to serve as bridges between the learning, practicing, and scientific communities while supporting educational programming at student and community farms. Ultimately, it is expected that the implementation of FARMS will increase student capacity and prepare the next generation of leaders to address complex challenges of the food system using an evidence-based approach.
2016
NACTA Journal • June 2016, Vol 60(2) Abstract The National Academy of Sciences called for a dynamic approach to teaching and learning in colleges of agriculture. In response, faculty at colleges and universities are implementing innovative frameworks for undergraduate education in the agricultural sciences. This study explored the collaborative and interdisciplinary teaching and learning practices of faculty in sustainable agriculture education curricula at a land grant university as an illustration of this innovation. Drawing upon a sociocultural learning framework, this study specifically emphasizes faculty work as a social practice and the inherently relational learning that occurs with other faculty, their students and community partners. Using an in-depth, qualitative research approach, a single embedded case study design was implemented to illustrate the teaching and learning experiences of an interdisciplinary group of faculty collaborating within an undergraduate minor that ...