Utilizing the 'Elements of Reasoning' to teach

摘要

I remember a student in my high school agricultural education program named Isaac. He was a confident and opinionated young man who never missed a chance to enter an argument or state his opinion. I recall a day when he adamantly argued that he could drive his ATV up a 90 degree incline. When I placed a framing square on the table and demonstrated what 90 degrees looked like he was still clinging to his position as he stated, "I can drive up a 90 degree incline if I get up enough speed first." Although Isaac surely does not represent every student, his poorly developed reasoning skills do reflect a problem with our middle and high school students across the country, in career and technical, and non-career and technical education programs. Teachingstudents to think "in" and "about" agriculture is a challenge for all agriculture teachers at every level of instruction. From the agriculture in the classroom teacher to the middle and high school teacher, to the university professor, we all need to spend time thinking about how we can teach students sound reasoning skills.