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How Farmers Learn
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| Farmers in Virginia indicated that on-farm demonstrations and one-on-one discussions were among their most preferred ways to learn. |
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Extension agents develop their methods of teaching agricultural practices through a combination of education, experience, and on-the-job training. A group of Virginia Tech faculty is looking at the topic of teaching agriculture from a different perspective: how farmers prefer to learn.
The project, “How Farmers Learn: Improving Sustainable Agricultural Education,” is a three-year study funded by a $205,000 grant from the southern region of the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program. SARE, supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, provides grants to develop and disseminate information about sustainable agriculture.
| "I wanted to ultimately develop training that would help agents become better teachers," says Nancy Franz. |
Nancy Franz, professor and Extension specialist for program development, and Fred Piercy, associate dean for graduate studies and research in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, are the project leaders.
“I got the idea for this project based on my years of observation of how Extension agents teach farmers,” says Franz. “I felt like agents teach in ways they are comfortable with, not necessarily in ways that farmers learn. I wanted to test that theory through research, and ultimately develop training that would help agents become better teachers.”
Piercy was a natural partner for this project because of his expertise in conducting focus groups, a method Franz intended to use to gather data, as well as his interest in learning more about farmers – an audience he was not familiar with. “Fred became interested in the project because he was intrigued by our plan to take a participatory approach in collecting data. He also was interested in our methodology that would include farmers on the steering committee that guides the project, rather than simply studying them,” Franz notes.
Research was conducted in Virginia in the first year of the project, which has concluded. Farmers in Virginia reported that their most preferred ways of learning are: hands-on, demonstration, farm visits, discussion, one-on-one, field days, and networking. In contrast, when Extension agents were asked about their instructional delivery methods, 88 percent reported “lecture” as the method they used most often. Only 68 percent of farmers said “lecture” was a preferred learning method for them. This is one example of how agents may need to change their teaching methods to appeal to farmers more. Now in its second year, the program is being replicated in Tennessee and Louisiana. Extension education faculty members in those states are conducting their own focus groups and surveys, and will send their data back to Franz and Piercy for analysis. They plan to use the data to develop training for Extension agents that will be offered across the southern region in the grant’s third year.
“We are hoping that after our three-year project ends, we can summarize the results and apply for further grant funding to take the program nationwide,” Franz concludes. “We believe that agents everywhere can benefit from training on how farmers in their audience prefer to learn.”