Melin, Martin
- Department of People and Society, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Abstract
A new way of doing education is essential to cultivate the competences needed to dealwith often vexing challenges of reaching sustainability in agri-food and forestrysystems. Overall, the new approach we introduce is characterized by 1) a shift fromtheory to phenomenon as the starting point for the learning process (‘experientiallearning’) and 2) a shift from knowledge to competence as the focus of the educationalactivities. One key strategy is involvement of students and other stakeholders to thepoint where they have co-ownership of the learning process, and thus are moremotivated to learn than when placed in a passive receiver role.Such a major shift in mindset and educational activities will represent a challenge forinstitutions, teachers and students or other stakeholders. It will be important to enableteachers to go through a necessary shift in mindset, and to enable them to master anew way of designing and doing education. We have therefore included thedevelopment of a toolbox for teaching practitioners in the Nextfood project: “We willsupport the teaching practitioners in the cases with a toolbox with guides, learningmodels and teaching materials, which will be continually updated during the project.This education materials will be demonstrated for case leaders in a series ofworkshops.” (from the Nextfood Grant Agreement). The toolbox will support teachersat any level of the education system (high school, vocational training & university), aswell as extension specialists devoted to experiential learning approaches. It is intendedfor courses and programs in the area of sustainable agri-food and forestry systems,but the methods and models are not content-specific and can be applied in a varietyof educational settings.The toolbox design supports the Nextfood educational approach, in which learners andother supply chain actors (farmers, foresters, advisors and industry representatives)are seen as important actors and co-creators of knowledge. Hence, the D3.2 providesprocess and tools for implementation of experiential learning in a multistakeholder setting. For a thorough explanation of the Nextfood educational approach,please refer to D3.1 (Educational approaches).
Published in
Publisher: NextFOOD
SLU Authors
UKÄ Subject classification
Pedagogy
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/109488