Growing hearts and minds: Linking landscapes and lifescapes in a soils field course

Abstract

Interacting with practitioners and understanding multiple, contradictory, and complex perspectives is an important skill for effectively managing terrestrial resources in the 21st century. Addressing these needs requires innovative approaches in higher education that elevate student learning outcomes and emphasize the affective learning domain through meaningful, place‐based interactions with practitioners. We describe an approach taken to expand a traditional soils field course to include emphasis on higher‐level student learning outcomes in the affective learning domain. Following the completion of a week‐long field study course in which students gain skills in soil description, classification, and interpretation, the expanded second module of the course includes a traveling component in which students experience soils, landscapes, and “lifescapes” (i.e., the lived experiences of practitioners). This second module incorporates practitioners as the primary source of knowledge and is structured to encourage dialogue, understanding, and co‐discovery centered around soils and land management. In unstructured narratives, students identified themes in the affective domain—deep collaboration, personal and professional development and sense of place, community, and joy—as transformational experiences in the course that influenced their personal and professional growth and future ability to interact with people from across the geographic, social, and political spectrum.

Becoming agroecologists: A pedagogical model to support graduate student learning and practice

“…Action learning includes both experiential and participatory learning. Both represent ways to learn through doing, in place-based, context-rich settings where learners experience the complexities and uncertainties of food systems (Lieblein et al, 2004;Valley et al, 2018;Jelinski et al, 2020). However, experiential and participatory learning differ in the learner's level of embeddedness.…”

Soil science education: A multinational look at current perspectives

“…While these techniques, particularly hands‐on activities such as laboratories and field trips or other field work (Field et al., 2011; Hartemink et al., 2014; Field et al., 2017), are time‐honored and effective ways to communicate material in an educational setting, the modern world offers many more options. Traditional soil science teaching has also effectively addressed the psychomotor (motor skills and actions that require physical coordination) and cognitive (intellectual side of learning) domains, but has not effectively addressed the affective (feelings, attitudes, emotions, and values related to learning) domain (Muggler, 2015; Jelinski et al., 2020). Some examples of innovations adopted by soil scientists as they educate students include problem‐based learning, the studio approach of grouping lectures and labs, use of virtual soil trips, animated videos, 3D models, game‐based learning through use of mobile technologies, collaboration with industry, flipped classrooms, and more.…”

Training future agriculture professionals in landowner–tenant conservation decision‐making

“…After reflection on the student work, it is important to recognize that the assignment and course overall might be better structured to more intentionally prompt students on valuing the relationship aspects in the case studies. Jelinski et al (2020) proposed a model for a soils travel course that centered the perspectives of stakeholders and the importance of place before investigating the more biophysical components of farms and landscapes. In this course, students met with stakeholders (including farmers and other agricultural professionals) for more extended periods of time (multiple days in some instances), students were given responsibilities in co-planning the travel and trip logistics, and deep conversations and unstructured discussions were encouraged.…”

“…Additionally, there are pedagogical approaches shown to be effective for gaining such skills in undergraduate education. Authentic or experiential learning associated with field-based courses, involving stakeholders and community groups, have been shown to improve student learning, engagement, and professional development in undergraduate agriculture courses (Jelinski, Perrone, Blair, & Fabian, 2020;Mann & Schroeder, 2019;Sorensen, Corral, Dauer, & Fontaine, 2018;Yates & Hodgson, 2018).…”