Engaging Values in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Education: Toward an Explicitly Values-Based Pedagogical Approach

Abstract

. Engaging values in sustainable agriculture and food systems education: Toward an explicitly values-based pedagogical approach. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 2(3) AbstractAgriculture education programs that provide integrative learning experiences that reflect the complexities, values, and challenges inherent to sustainable agriculture and food systems (SAFS) continue to evolve as faculty, staff, and students implement, experience, and modify them. Higher education institutions, especially land-grant universities, have strengths that position them to implement transformative learning and action methodologies. In this article we explore the principles, approaches, and practices consistent with integrative learning and a values-based pedagogical approach to curriculum design and teaching specific to SAFS. By a values-based pedagogical approach, we mean paying explicit attention to the values that (1) underpin different agricultural and food systems and their governance, (2) inform and shape educational strategies and experiences, and (3) are held by different individuals in various encounters in the learning environment. A values-based approach to SAFS curriculum development, teaching, and integrative learning is dynamic rather than static. We provide illustrations of practices across the education "lifecycle" -curriculum design, implementation, and evaluation -that have used values-based pedagogy to guide the development, modification, and strengthening of SAFS curricula. Finally, we discuss some limitations and issues that arise when using such pedagogical frameworks. We conclude by challenging educators to focus on connecting values relevant to SAFS with innovative curricular practices that allow emergence of new ways of teaching, learning, and knowing for all.

Writing a Recipe for Teaching Sustainable Food Systems: Lessons from Three University Courses

“…Many of the learning activities inherently foster engagement in non-hierarchical, responsive, reflective, and flexible learning environments that are safe spaces for discordant pluralism, in which the knowledge flows both ways between students and instructors [1,10,21]. Within the learning activities, students can be explicitly reminded about the open nature of the inquiry and invited to ask more questions of the material, the instructor, other experts, and each other.…”

“…"Creating a safe space for deliberations of deeply important matters allows for engagement without domination that coerces conversion ..." [10] (p. 46).…”

“…Reflective Narrative Learning "Reflective essays are assignments that require students to reflect on their learning as a personal experience by connecting their interests, values, and development with other cognitive and affective dimensions of learning" [10] (p. 51).…”

“…If the goal of food systems education is to equip students to tackle complex food systems problems, educators must embrace "fundamental changes in both what and how we teach" [10] (p. 44). In Section 3, we first delineate what to teach by isolating the necessary systems thinking concepts that are identified as the key ingredients for food systems courses, framed through our experience teaching these concepts through an applied economics lens [1,8].…”

“…Undergraduate and graduate students are poised to engage the wicked problems of the food system, putting university education to the task of supplying the tools and knowledge that they need through interdisciplinary food systems or sustainable agriculture programs at universities [1,[7][8][9][10][11]. Food system work is springing from colleges of agriculture in the agro-ecological or environmental sciences disciplines, incorporating social science disciplines that bring in dimensions of culture and justice, public health and nutrition, agricultural economics, public policy and planning, and others.…”