Learning by Doing: Rebuilding New Interests

Learning by doing was John Dewey's philosophy that agricultural educators have embraced for many years. Dewey believed that teachers should act as facilitators or guides, instead of teaching without practical application which detours student learning. Recently, the Kingsville FFA Chapter embraced this philosophy when the students started rebuilding a John Deere 1939 H as a shop project two years ago in an Agriculture Power I class. The Agriculture Power I Class started out in the classroom with instruction on the basic principles of how an engine operates, the basic operational procedures of how to rebuild an engine and transmission, and all the way to mixing up the paint to paint the tractor. However, teaching the material to students is not like having a hands-on project. I will explain how this project induced student learning by the teacher simply acting as a facilitator of teaching and learning by doing this project. After the first semester of the 2001-2002 school year, I asked all the students if they had a project that they wanted to work on in class for the rest of the school year. The next thing I knew was one student had a small antique tractor to rebuild. I told the student to "bring it in" not knowing it was in several pieces and in five baskets of parts. The experience was a real one, looking at several parts and owner's manuals. I also had many years of farm tractor mechanic experience from working full time at my father's farm supply business that was in existence for better than 20 years. The students had a big task scattering out the parts and looking up all the needed and broken parts. The students gave me a parts list that seemed like a never-ending Christmas list. Every day seemed like a new adventure for the students. They found out the connecting rods of this old tractor did not have removable bearing inserts, but molded babited bearings on the rods with fine shims on each rod bolted to adjust the rod bearing clearance. Students also found out some history of this tractor by conducting research on the Internet and through books, which was done on their own time outside of class. The tractor had two fuel tanks-one for gas and other one for kerosene, which the tractor primarily operated on in working conditions. Also, many times while working on this tractor, the students would refer back to the first semester of learning all the basic techniques of overhauling an engine. That greatly helped reinforce student learning by actually overhauling and rebuilding the tractor. …