Instructional Methods in School-Based Agricultural Education

Introduction

Teaching methods and strategies can often be assumed to be the same but are differentiated approaches to classroom teaching. Methods look at the specific plan or big picture for classroom instruction. Strategies are the smaller components that build the method. School Based Agricultural Education (SBAE) has a long history of instructional methods that are pragmatic in approach. Methodologically, SBAE has historically aligned with the problem-solving approach to teaching (Krebs, 1967). More recently, inquiry-based instruction has become a central method of teaching in SBAE. Recent programs/curriculum transitioning the profession are through the National Agriscience Teacher Ambassador Academy and advent of the Curriculum for Agricultural Science Education (CASE) curriculum. For a time, the profession struggled with determining a difference between the terms of problem-solving, problem-based learning, and inquiry-based learning (Parr & Edwards, 2004). Regardless, methods within SBAE are rooted in the seminal work of Dewey (1938) that purported students learn best when presented with or relating to an experience and expanding their learning in a social nature between the learners, content, and instructor.

Additionally, SBAE has a community focus that drives what is taught in classrooms which draws out the pragmatic approach and thus creating authentic real-world investigations (McKim & McHugh, 2022). This localized aspect creates teachable and life-relatable problems for students in the agriculture curricula. This community focus and the discipline belief that learners learn best from concrete experiences to abstract concepts (Kolb, 1984) brings in the need for the use of laboratory components and teaching methods that go beyond a subject-matter approach to teaching. Within the classroom and laboratory instruction, there are many different areas of focus central to highlighting student learning. Added, there are leadership aspects that the student leadership organization promotes as part of their student development in career and life skills. The National FFA Organization (along with state associations and local chapters) prepare students for career development events (CDEs), leadership and life skills. Each component of SBAE has embedded problem-solving and/or inquiry-based principles.

Understanding Agriculture: New Directions for Education (NRC,1988) was a pivotal publication that is largely responsible for reconnecting agriculture and science. The argument that agriculture is a science played a role in the thinking that SBAE does play a role in student academic success on core content assessments. Decades of research focused on teaching the science of agriculture, teaching agriculture as a science, and agriculture being additive to student academic success in science (Thoron & Rubenstein, 2013), almost to the extent that the profession focused on science concepts first, before coming back to the community focus and philosophical belief that SBAE is best delivered through a community-based problem-solving approach.

SBAE teachers must therefore possess knowledge of the community, skills in the agriculture industry, science knowledge that underlines the agriculture principles. SBAE teachers are also tasked with the teaching ability for student skill development and academic achievement, and industry certification. As part of the total agricultural education program: classroom and laboratory, SAE, and FFA instruction must be considered. To be effective in each, the profession has examined teaching methods and teacher effectiveness through a series of studies that measure academic success, effective teaching methods, content knowledge achievement, science process skills, laboratory investigation tools, and leadership and learning style indicators.

Teaching Strategies

Teaching methods references the process and procedures where a strategy focuses on the goal and sequence of actions (Ray, 2022). “Teaching method is limited to the presentation of the subject matter inside a classroom situation, teaching strategy is the achieving of some objectives through any method of teaching” (Ray, 2022, p. d496). Teaching strategies can be considered the individual tools in an educators’ toolbox. Several strategies may be used in the overall teaching method in the daily classroom. Below, discussion and examples of strategies are provided to share with students in teacher preparation programs to help fill their toolboxes as shown in figure 1.