Serving to Learn: Increasing Agriculture Students Self-Efficacy Through Service-Learning

Abstract

Service learning is a form of experiential learning that helps students be able to both apply concepts and provide a benefit to an organization, individual, or group other than the learner. The lack of efficacy of our students with the complex skills learned in many agriculture courses brings about a sense of fear and trepidation in students that can cause them to either not engage with the material/skill or do so in an ineffective manner. Service learning was used in a course that has had low levels of efficacy associated to help motivate students to learn and practice the skills being taught. Students in an agricultural mechanics course engaging in activities with Habitat for Humanity progressed through Bandura’s four types of learning experiences integral to the efficacious establishment of a behavior in two directions. Using Constant Comparative method to analyze the reflections of the students it was determined that they progressed through the activity from the perspective of students, moving from the least to most efficacious. They then, with no prompting, reflected backwards from the perspective of most to least efficacious as they began to reflect on how they would facilitate communicating or teaching these same concepts to novices.