STRENGTHENING
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS THROUGH AN EXPANDED MODEL FOR SUPERVISED
AGRICULTURAL EXPERIENCE
The Swiss were not willing to change and have suffered the consequences. At one time they dominated the time piece market but today the Japanese are the world leaders. The reason for this is because the Swiss were not willing to change the way they made watches. When they discovered the quartz movement for watches, they rejected the idea. It did not fit into the Swiss paradigm of watch making which said watches must have mainsprings and balance wheels. They didn't even patent their discovery. The Japanese adopted the quartz movement and the rest is history.
Over the years, the project method of teaching and its offspring (the supervised farming program, the supervised occupational experience program and now the program of supervised agricultural experience) has served agricultural education well. When the idea was promulgated in 1908 by Rufus Stimson of Massachusetts, it was accepted and adopted in agricultural education and in most other areas of education. Agricultural education was the leader in education reform as the "project" replaced the dry, boring recitation method of that era. But in this era of integrating academic and vocational education and developing critical thinking skills, a new paradigm for Supervised Agricultural Experience must be embraced. If we don't, we may we get left behind in the educational arena like the Swiss were in the watch making arena.
AN EXPANDED MODEL FOR SAE
The National Research Council (1988) in Understanding Agriculture: New Directions for Education recommended that the relevance and scope of SOE be broadened. In response to this recommendation, a national task force on SAE was convened and have worked on enhancing the SAE program. A model developed by the task force was described in the December, 1992 issue of this publication (Barrick, 1992; Hughes, 1992). After considerable discussion of the task force model, agricultural educators in North Carolina took the model and refined and expanded it even further. New components were added and some of the traditional components that were not readily visible in the task force model were included. This model recognizes that agricultural education has two outcomes; agricultural literacy and career preparation. The model embraces the traditional components of SAE such as entrepreneurship and placement but adds new components designed for students in agriscience classes, agrimarketing classes and other emerging areas in agriculture. A discussion of each component of the model follows.
MAJOR COMPONENTS OF SAE
Exploratory - This type of SAE is appropriate for beginning agricultural
students but is not restricted just to beginning students. This SAE
activity is designed primarily to help students become literate in agriculture
and/or become aware of possible careers in agriculture. Examples
of exploratory SAE activities might include observing and/or assisting
a florist, interviewing an agricultural loan officer in a bank, preparing
a scrapbook on the work of a veterinarian, and growing plants in a milk
jug "greenhouse". The teacher will need to establish minimum standards
(hours required for each exploratory activity and/or number of exploratory
activities). Records are to be kept by the student. For an
in-depth discussion of exploratory programs, see Arrington's article in
the December 1992 issue of this magazine.
Entrepreneurship - Simply stated, the student owns and manages
some type of agricultural enterprise such as a crop, livestock or an agricultural
business. Examples of entrepreneurship activities include growing
an acre of corn, operating a Christmas tree farm, growing bedding plants,
raising a litter of pigs, owning a lawn care service, and a student cooperative
growing poinsettias. Moody (1992) describes entrepreneurship programs
in detail in the December issue of this publication.
Placement - Placement has been a major component of SAE since the 1960s.
Students are placed in jobs in agribusiness firms, in school or community
facilities and on farms or ranches. This is typically done outside
of normal classroom hours and may be paid or non-paid. Students keep
records as to hours worked, type of work activities performed and wages.
Examples of placement SAE include working after school at a farm supply
store, placement in a florist shop, working on Saturdays at a riding stable,
and working in the school greenhouse after school and on weekends and holidays.
The December 1992 issue of this magazine contains an article describing
the importance of placement in relation to SAE (Doerfert, 1992).
Experimental - While entrepreneurship and placement SAEs are certainly excellent forms of experiential learning, equal value should be placed on nontraditional SAE programs. Experimental is new category of SAE where the student plans and conducts a major agricultural experiment using the scientific process. The purpose of the experiment is to provide students "hands-on" experience in:
A quality experimental SAE should:
Analytical - Not all of the experiential activities in which
students may participate can neatly be classified as exploratory, entrepreneurship,
placement or experimental. For example a student in an agrimarketing
class may complete an in-depth market analysis of an agricultural commodity
and follow that activity with simulated trading activities in the commodities
market over an extended period of time. This is more involved than
exploratory but doesn't fit into the other categories.
Another example is a student who is interested in agricultural journalism
and writes a series of articles on agriculture in the community for the
local newspaper. The student may not necessarily be on the newspaper
staff and may not actually have a placement agreement with the newspaper.
These SAE programs involve an extensive amount of research and analysis and require the student to place their opinions and thoughts on the line. Students who choose an analytical SAE must identify an agricultural problem that is not amenable to experimentation and design a plan to investigate and analyze the problem. The student will gather and evaluate data from a variety of sources and then produce some type of finished product. The product could be a marketing display or marketing plan for an agricultural commodity, a series of newspaper articles, a land use plan for a farm, a detailed landscape design for a community facility, an advertising campaign for an agribusiness, and so forth. An analytical SAE is flexible enough so that it could be used in any type of agricultural class, provides valuable experience and contributes to the development of critical thinking skills deemed so important in education today.
MINOR COMPONENTS OF THE SAE PROGRAM
Each student in the agricultural education program should have an exploratory,
entrepreneurship, placement, experimental or analytical SAE or a combination
of these. They provide experiential learning activities that will help
students learn more about agriculture and can lead to agricultural literacy
or establishment in an agricultural career. In addition to these major
SAE activities, there are two minor components of a SAE program--improvement
and supplementary activities. These minor components, of and in themselves
do not comprise a SAE program, but they can be valuable supplements to
the SAE program. A comprehensive SAE program will include both improvement
activities and supplementary activities.
Improvement - Improvement activities include a series of learning
activities that improves the value or appearance of the place of employment,
home, school or community; the efficiency of an enterprise or business,
or the living conditions of the family. An improvement activity involves
a series of steps and generally requires a number of days for completion.
Examples of improvement activities include landscaping the home, building
or reorganizing a farm shop, computerizing the records of an agricultural
business, and renovating and restocking a pond
Supplementary - A supplementary activity is one where the student performs one specific agricultural skill outside of normal class time. This skill is not related to the major SAE but is normally taught in an agricultural program, involves experiential learning and does contribute to the development of agricultural skills and knowledge on the part of the student. The activity is often accomplished in less than a day and does not require a series of steps. Examples of supplementary activities include pruning a fruit tree, fertilizing a lawn, helping a neighbor castrate pigs and changing oil in a sod cutter.
SUMMARY
The SAE components described in this article should provide agricultural education students with valuable, experience-based learning activities that will help prepare them for the future. The new SAE components can be exciting and fun for students if the agriculture teacher introduces them properly. Additionally, students should be hard pressed to have a valid excuse as to why they can't have an exploratory, experimental or analytical SAE. Any student can participate in these type of activities.
REFERENCES
Arrington, L. R. (1992). Expanding SAE: Exploratory programs. The Agricultural
Education Magazine. 65 (6), 13-15.
Barrick, R. K. (1992). A new model for agricultural education and SAE.
The Agricultural Education Magazine. 65 (6), 4-7.
Doerfert, D. (1992). The ultimate experience. The Agricultural
Education Magazine. 65 (6), 11-13.
Hughes, M. (1992). The new SAE. The Agricultural Education Magazine.
65 (6), 8-10.
Moody, L. D. (1992). Entrepreneurship ? Still the mainstay of SAE. The
Agricultural Education Magazine. 65 (6), 16-17.
National Research Council (1988). Understanding Agriculture: New directions
for education. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.