Teachers and students’ perception of competence-based education in the agricultural higher education system (Case of a student cooperative in Iran)

ABSTRACT

Purpose: This quantitative study sought to investigate the perceptions of teachers and students regarding competency-based education (CBE) principles at the College of Agriculture at Razi University.

Design: This research is a comparative analysis of two groups. The first group consists of undergraduate and graduate students majoring in agriculture who are members and non-members of student cooperatives (n = 256). The second group consists of agricultural faculty members (n = 59).

Findings: The results of this study show that students and teachers have different views with regard to the extent to which CBE principles are practiced in the College of Agriculture. Moreover, students with different learning patterns had different perceptions regarding the extent to which CBE is practiced, whereas teachers with different teaching patterns had the same perception of the application of CBE principles in the College of Agriculture.

Practical implications: This study has practical implications for agricultural higher education in general and colleges of agriculture in particular. Colleges of agriculture across Iran could encourage their students to establish and engage in student cooperatives so that the ‘what’ and ‘how’ aspects of CBE are put into practice.

Theoretical implications: This study has theoretical implications for CBE principles. For example, student cooperatives can be utilized by faculty members as one of the main strategies for developing CBE in agricultural colleges.

Originality/value: This study is original in that it moves from theory to practice when considering CBE.

KEYWORDS:

• Perception
• competence-based education
• student cooperative

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Mahsa Saadvandi is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Agricultural Extension and Education, Faculty of Agriculture, Tarbiat Modares University, Iran. She works on her dissertation entitle ‘Designing Competency- based Model in Agricultural Higher Education’. Her research interests include ‘agricultural education and competence’ and ‘professional development’. She also manages an agricultural student cooperative at Tarbiat Modares University.

Enayat Abbasi is an Associate Professor at the Department of Agricultural Extension and Education, Faculty of Agriculture, Tarbiat Modares University, Iran. He teaches ‘lifelong education’, ‘agricultural education’ and ‘research method’ for graduate students. His research interests include ‘agriculture and environment education’, ‘teaching and learning in agricultural higher education system’. He is the author of ‘Organizational Learning in Higher Education System’ (in Persian). He has translated ‘Agricultural Information Transfer Systems’ from English into Persian.

Homayou Farhadiean is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Agricultural Extension and Education, Faculty of Agriculture, Tarbiat Modares University, Iran. He teaches ‘agricultural education’, ‘agricultural extension’ and ‘research method’. His research interests include ‘agricultural education and extension’ and ‘agricultural higher education system’.

Kiumars Zarafshani is an Associate Professor at the Department of Agricultural Extension and Education, Faculty of Agriculture, Razi University, Iran. He teaches ‘lifelong education’, ‘agricultural education’, ‘agricultural entrepreneurship’ and ‘research method’. His research interests include ‘agricultural education’ and ‘agricultural entrepreneurship in higher education’. He established agricultural student cooperative in five agricultural faculties and now he is the advisor for most of agricultural student cooperative in Iran.

Harm Biemans is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education and Learning Science at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. His research interests include ‘teaching and learning’, ‘pedagogy and education’, ‘professional development’ and ‘collaborative learning’. He is working on several projects (as an example ‘Focus on the future perspective of the student’).

ORCID

Mahsa Saadvandi http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8343-3191

Enayat Abbasi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5238-7185

Homayoun Farhadian http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0424-6107

Kiumars Zarafshani http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2574-6197

Harm Biemans http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2955-8211

Notes

1. Sampling error was calculated to ensure that the responses were the same in two modes of return rate 100% and 76.2% and 76.9%. As the amount of calculated sampling error (0.047 and 0.037, respectively for students and teachers) is less than 0.05, since it means that there is no significant difference between the results.