On Innovating Agricultural Extension Education Model

Nowadays, Chinese agricultural and rural economy developments have entered into a brand new phase. Agricultural development has been transformed from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture, from extensive operation to intensive operation; consequently the rural economy has an alteration in the way of growth. Under such circumstances, it entirely depends on scientific and technological progress and enhancement of rural labors' qualifications in order to achieve the following three tasks-improve agricultural efficiency, enlarge peasants' income, strengthen international competitive of agricultural products. Therefore, Chinese agricultural extension should change from administrative and service extension to educational extension and train millions of modern peasants who are suitable in rural talents market for modern agriculture. Agricultural extension education should be open to the peasant group, aim at social progress and economic growth in the countryside, promote all-round education on producing, living and ecological skills; regard peasants' self-development as the starting point; enhance peasants' ability of job-choosing, employment, innovation. But Chinese traditional education on agricultural extension has cared too much for logical and systematic knowledge instead of students' ability development and personality. Also the traditional method is lacking in flexibility and comprehension, which causes teaching not to suit the jobs needed in the society and can't smoothly achieve the teaching goal. With regard to this, we should take new vocational theory, people's viewpoints, life-long education conception as the guideline, borrow advanced model of agricultural extension abroad, develop course system which is popular in 21 century, innovate agricultural extensioneducation model, effectively cultivate students' agricultural qualifications. Setting out with modularization course system of gardening in secondary agricultural education, we have made three-year bold reformations to attempt to create new agricultural extension education model. The results of experiments show: reformation on modularization course system has upgraded the traditional content of gardening, improved efficiency of the gardening course development, built the teaching mechanism of a combination of 'teaching, acting, observing and learning' and an opening comment way on teaching, fostered a professional group of gardening teachers with 'double-skill' and of good quality, realized the combination of the college and school-running with factories together, perfected the students' ability structure, developed the qualifications and production capacity of teachers and students. The research shows: making reformations on agricultural extension course system to innovate agricultural extension education is available. It's efficient to improve teaching quality of agricultural extension education, promote the development of Chinese agricultural extension education and meet the needs of talents market in agricultural extension, which is quite meaningful to the transformation of secondary agricultural schools' education in Hunan even in the whole country-from extensive to intensive development, the promotion of alteration in agricultural extension-from administrative and service extension toward educational extension.