Think about it!

Throughout my study of education I have been striving to understand exactly how we, as educators, can help our students love learning. I have been frustrated because I feel that our current system of education in the U.S. is not conducive to the development of a love of learning, and that many times it has the opposite effect. I have often felt discouraged and disenfranchised, but at the same time I knew that there had to be something that could help me to empower students to love learning and effectively seek answers to questions that they would have. I think that I may have found a very important tool that can help me achieve this, at least in part.


Inquiry based instruction is an approach that utilizes the scientific method to capitalize on natural curiosity in our students. It is about the process of discovering new knowledge without a teacher to tell you what to memorize or do.  It is an empowering process for both the student and the teacher as they are edified by increasing their capacities to obtain knowledge from their own experiences with the world.

As I can't write everything I have learned about inquiry based instruction in this blog, I will write about something that I was having a difficult time wrapping my head around and that is breaking the culture of working for a grade. As I have written about previously, we know that we work in a "system" whether we like it or not. We have to assess learning and students need a grade to show how well they "understand" the material so that they can put it on their transcripts and get into a good university. But with that system, students aren't motivated by learning new and interesting things about the world, they aren't interested in discovery, they simply want to know what will be on the test so that they can get an A. I had been thinking about just telling the students that as long as they work hard they will get an A, but I felt that that left a lot of subjectivity in the assessment process.

In the article, "Inquiry-based instruction: How is it utilized" that was published in the Journal of Agricultural Education, the researcher used focus groups to better understand teacher experiences with inquiry based learning. A comment from one of the members of a focus group mentioned that although there are usually many right answers, the students are assessed not on whether or not they get the right answer, but how well they justify the conclusions that they draw from the data that they collect. I think that that takes some of the anxiety out of the the process and helps students to focus on learning instead of the grade. This really hit home with me and I am excited to be able to experiment with this approach.

I believe that agricultural education is in a unique position to provide inquiry based instruction in the context of agriculture. I think that it is imperative that we share out what we are doing to ensure that others recognize that we are not just training farmers, but that we are engaging our students in deeper levels of cognition in many different subjects that include, but are not limited to mathematics, science, reading, and writing.

I know I still have a lot to learn about how to empower students to love learning, but I am confident that inquiry based instruction is an approach that will help me accomplish that goal.

Thoron, A.C., Myers, B.E., & Abrams, K. (2011). Inquiry-based instruction: How is it utilized
accepted, and assessed in schools with national agriscience teacher ambassadors? Journal of
Agriculture Education, 52(1), 96-106. DOI: 10.5032/jae.2011.01096

The Problem Solving Approach - Lab Reflection

I had a good time teaching this lab. Looking back and getting some feedback from my peers I can see how it can be improved a lot, and I am excited about that, but honestly I had fun teaching. I really do love teaching, I don't know exactly why, but I do. That is encouraging to me on days when I feel that there is so much expected of us as teacher candidates and will be expected of us as teachers.

I really do want to be a great teacher and help make young people's lives better in any way that I can, but I also want to have fun and enjoy my career. I am not insinuating that being a great teacher and having fun are incompatible, but sometimes I feel that if we are so caught up in teaching to the different intelligences, domains, and modalities of learning and the other thousands of articles and books published on effective teaching, that we may miss out on the most important and magical part of teaching, and that is, in my humble opinion, interacting with students.

Differentiated Instruction

I listened to Ken Robinson's talk about the education system in the United States being based on an industrial model in which students are "educated" in groups, or batches, that have nothing to do with readiness or interest or anything at all really except that they are the same age. It is one of those talks that makes so much sense, but at the same time discouraging because at the end of the day we are still a part of this "system" and, for the time being, there isn't a lot that we can do about it.

Although we do have to work within the education system, there are many ways in which we as teachers can move beyond the industrial model of education with its concurrent conformist agenda, and not only engage our students, but empower them. That is where differentiated instruction comes into play.

Stated simply, differentiated instruction is "instruction that is responsive to students' readiness, interest, and learning preferences."

When I think of readiness I think about the zone of proximal development (see image). The hard thing is is that in a class of 20 students you will have 20 different students with different levels of readiness. If you simplify the content too much, some kids will get bored, however if it is too difficult some students will get confused and give up. So the trick is to get everyone engaged and learning based on where they are.

A student will be more engaged and enthusiastic about learning if what they are learning is interesting to them. Check out the primary and secondary principles of interest for more about that.

Learning preferences refers to how each individual wants to learn. I think of Gardner's multiple intelligences and realize that not all learners learn best through lecture or even through hands on activities.


At this point you are probably thinking, "Oh yeah, you're talking about individualized instruction, right?" Wrong! Differentiated instruction is not synonymous with individualized instruction. Differentiated instruction is about using variability of teaching techniques and approaches to address a diverse array of learner needs and preferences.


Bottom line, with our current system it is not feasible to address every students needs and preferences simultaneously, but we can engage a diverse group of students by varying our instructional approaches to meet the needs of those diverse learners.

If you want to learn more here is a great brochure from EduGAINS as well as an image from that brochure that sums up differentiated learning pretty well.

References 
Ken Robinson: Changing Education Paradigms by The RSA https://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U

Reach Every Student Through Differentiated Instruction - EduGAINS
http://www.edugains.ca/resourcesDI/Brochures/DIBrochureOct08.pdf

How to assess learning effectively, efficiently, and objectively.

A teacher I worked with taught me a little about grading and it has stuck with me. Grading needs to as objective as possible. If a student or parent comes up to you and asks why they received a poor grade you had better be able to defend why you gave the grade that you did. So how do we do that? How can we ensure that we are grading objectively and more than that, that we are grading effectively and efficiently?

This is what I learned this week. First, you need to determine what the students already know. To accomplish this, a pre-test can be a very useful tool. A pre-test is a short assessment that helps you understand what the students already know and perhaps understand more about the diversity of understanding that is present in your classroom. However, make sure that the students know that it is not actually a test, or that it will even be graded at all so that they don't feel pressure to know content that they have never formally learned. But I ask myself if this is really that effective, I mean if students know it is not graded, how do we incentivize them to take it seriously? Hopefully,you have already demonstrated the value of the classes that you teach and you can help them to understand that by participating in the pre-test, that it will make the class more interesting.

Another tool that is especially useful for remaining as objective as possible are utilizing rubrics. I think that this is a tool that can help students understand what is expected of them (clarity of expectations), but in my own experience it can also limit the creativity of students. So there needs to be some sort of balance between establishing clear expectations and leaving it open-ended enough for students to be able to use their creative liberties.

We are supposed to be about learning, our goal is for our students to learn and be empowered by what they are learning. An effective strategy to ensure that this is happening is to give students the opportunity to revise their work that you have already graded and allow them to turn it back in for more feedback/a final grade.

That being said, I always think that a completely different perspective on things is refreshing and interesting. I came across some posts by Mark Barnes, who you may have heard of before, but he advocates for ditching grades altogether. I won't write about his opinions (some I agree with and others not so much), but check out this post and his Twitter feed if that sparks your interest.

Parting question: is there a difference between grading and assessing?

Problem Solving and 21st Century Skills

I sometimes like to think about what my ideal agricultural program would be like. What would the facilities be like? How would the students learn? What would the program focus be? My thoughts gravitate to images of me walking through the young orchard of fruit and nut trees early in the morning with my students following me and observing the living processes around them. In my vision, learning is a result of being aware of what is happening around us. The students’ curiosity leads questions and problems that they want to solve.

As teachers we are supposed to be preparing young people to be critical thinkers and creative; competent in the four areas identified as 21st century skills. That seems difficult to do when we use the same approaches that have led us to our current failing educational system.

Larmer and Mergendoller insist that to accomplish this task, project based learning can be especially effective.

Project based learning is more that just having the students complete projects to apply the knowledge that learned in the classroom. Project based learning is when the projects become the learning method. The students create their own projects based on their interests. Their natural curiosity and passion help drive them to ask questions and search for answers to the various problems or obstacles they encounter.

School-based agricultural education I believe is in a unique position to implement project based learning, considering that supervised agricultural experiences is part of the education model.

While reading up on project based learning and thinking about SAE's, I kept thinking about ways to help students find something that they are passionate about so that they can truly reap all of the benefits that this learning technique can provide. I did some searching around and I found a few resources that I think will be helpful in encouraging students to design and develop their projects.

I will share one with you that I found particularly helpful and I encourage you to check it out.
http://www.exploresae.com/