Experiential Education and Career Development Events

Experiential education or "learning by doing" has been a part of vocational agricultural education since before the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917. Teachers in the early 1900s recognized the importance of experiences outside of the formal school classroom. Early agricultural education programs included gardening and farm projects for students. Stimson (1919) was one of the first agricultural education professionals to espouse the value of experiential education. Early science educators realized the value of experiences in science outside the classroom. If we accept the principle of "learning by doing", we must use experiences and community resources outside the school setting. Experiential education is a process through which a learner constructs knowledge, skill and value from direct experience. The Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 referred to home projects, stating "schools shall provide directed or supervised practice in agriculture, either on a farm provided by the school or other farm, for at least six months per year. " John Dewey (1935), stated "Basing education upon personal experience may mean more multiplied and more intimate contacts between the mature and the immature than ever existed in the traditional school. " He went on to discuss the importance of continued experiential education when he stated ". the principle of continuity of experience means that every experience both takes up something from those which have gone before and modifies in some way the qualities of those which come after. " The Vocational Education Act of 1963 brought renewed emphasis to the importance of enhancing learning experiences by the placement of students in agribusiness-related occupations. This emphasis was known as cooperative education. It still is today, only today the new name is School-To-Work (STW) programs. Additionally, today "service learning" is a new thrust whereby students learn the value of connecting to their communities through experiential education. By working in real life experiences with adults in their communities, students have an opportunity for understanding and appreciating social and civic responsibility through participating in community service and other projects. A report titled High Schools of the Millennium: Implications for Career and Technical Education by the American Youth Policy Forum (2000) stated "Students have opportunities to experience authentic learning situations with adults - at work, in the community, through volunteer activities, sports, clubs, or other youth groups. " The report identified reasons why schools need to change, including that high schools are still dominated by lecture-style classes where the content is divorced from the real world and students have limited opportunity for learning in the community. Employers have also indicated that the shortage of technical skills and general employability skills is the number one barrier to career success in the real world. Almost five years ago, the educational community witnessed an increased emphasis for "real world" experiences for all students through the School-to-Work (STW) program. This program called for all students, both those in career and technical education courses, college prep and general education courses to receive on-the-job training through school sponsored experiential education. In agricultural education, students are supposed to receive their experiential education component through their supervised agricultural experience (SAE) program, as taught through the traditional three-circle model for agricultural education including classroom/laboratory instruction, SAE, and the FFA. Students enrolled in secondary agricultural education courses are to have an identified program that is agriculture in nature, supervised by the agriculture teacher, and provides real-life experiences related to their area of interest. It is evident, however, that not all agricultural education students have developed quality SAE programs. …