Innovative agricultural education curriculum practices promote sustainability in the Balkan Region of South-Eastern Europe

Abstract

Sustainability is a term that can be found in most documents that relate to agricultural and rural development. As a rule, the phrase “sustainable agriculture” is used to denote a particular set of farming practices and/or agricultural policies. However, in an era of continuous knowledge change it is now clearer that sustainability in agriculture can best be understood and advanced in the form of learning processes. The Dimitris Perrotis College of Agricultural Studies (DPCAS) is a recently established, private international post-secondary educational institute. One of the major concerns of the DPCAS curriculum is to infuse the notion of sustainability in the students through various innovations following a “small steps” model. More specifically, promoting courses that increase the concern for the environment, engaging the students in course activities, which demand multidisciplinary information search, and teaching with direct applications of IT, positively affect the conceptual knowledge of sustainability obtained by the students.