WASHINGTON─Agriculture in the 21st century is rapidly expanding its "product line," aiming not only to provide society with food and fiber, but also biofuels, bioproducts, carbon storage, aquifer recharge, biodiversity, and still other goods and services. Meanwhile, critics demand a focus on sustainability and responsibility as this new agriculture develops, underscoring the grand intellectual, moral and practical challenges it presents. These challenges demand innovation in education.
New ways to teach today's agriculture are published in the 2008 Journal of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Education.
"We offered an experimental course that provided foundational experiences for social learning needed to increase sustainability," study researcher Nicholas Jordan said. "Students participated in exercises that built awareness of individual and collective knowledge and knowing. Other exercises emphasized moral, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions of worldviews."
