Confronting the Challenge of Agricultural Education and Training
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This document summarizes the work of the InnovATE project, which aims to strengthen agricultural education and training systems. It discusses two main challenges facing agricultural education: an imbalance between education and research, and adapting to a dynamic context requiring innovation. It also outlines InnovATE's activities in assessing institutions, disseminating knowledge and skills, and recommendations for fostering technical change through adaptive management and developing an agricultural innovation system approach.
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Confronting the Challenge of Agricultural Education and Training
- 1. KeithM.Moore Director,InnovATE/VirginiaTech keithm@vt.edu MEASSymposium StrengtheningExtensionandAdvisoryServicesfor LastingImpacts 3-5June2015 Washington,D.C. Confronting the Challenge of Agricultural Education and Training
- 2. innovATE Theory of Change •Missions ready to invest in AET institutions •We can meet need Assumptions • Scoping • Research Needs assessments •Recommendations •Priorities •Opportunities •Implementation plans innovATE strategies •CoP/Sharing •Publications/Tools •Workshops •Self-assessments innovATE activities •Improved AET systems & institutions •Effective value chains Impact LEARN DESIGN TRAIN
- 5. What we have accomplished Assessed AET institutions and systems and the labor markets they serve Identified appropriate knowledge, skills, and tools Disseminated the knowledge, skills and tools developed • Held workshops, a symposia, training sessions • Published thematic and good practice papers • Conducted 8 AET scoping assessments • Earned an associate award in a non-FtF country
- 6. Gender in AET Workforce Development Pedagogy and Curriculum • Gender, Higher Ed, and AET • Gender Roadmap Educational Pipeline • Muslim Women in AET • Gender issues and recommendations for encouraging women in higher education AET programs • Supporting female faculty members in the agricultural sciences • Careers along the horticulture value chain • Gender Training module • Youth entrepreneurship in agriculture • RWFD/Value Chain case studies • Employment and Workforce Development for Rural and Food-based Economies • Role of Agricultural Technical and Vocational Education and Training in Developing Countries • Current WFD themes and change pathways • ATVET Training module • Degree training and curriculum development to support HICD • Challenges and Opportunities for AET in Post-Conflict Sub-Saharan Africa • Gender, Agriculture and Nutrition Symposium • Linking Transformative Teaching with Sustainable Workforce Development • Community Participatory Curriculum Development • Good Practices: Mentoring New Faculty; Elements of Reasoning; ICT in AET
- 7. Unskilled labor Skilled workers with job specific training Short-term Education Institution Youth Primary School Lower Secondary Tertiary education Skilled workers Technical/Vocational Secondary General Secondary Semi-skilled workers Workers with basic skills Highly skilled professionals Educational Pipeline
- 8. Agricultural education and training faces two challenges An unbalanced institutional culture in which • Education is seen as transferring knowledge created elsewhere • Research is seen as creating that knowledge • Learning is not perceived as a creative activity An dynamic institutional context in which • Change is endemic, involving climate change and volatile markets • Innovation, adaptive management and entrepreneurship are required
- 9. The Educational Challenge Instructional quality is characterized by: • Professor reading from the notes he took as a student • Science taught as the memorization of facts • A lack of syllabi and student oriented learning • A lack of coherence between learning objectives, pedagogical practices, and assessment Although experiential learning is valued and emphasized by faculty and administrators, the tradition of memorization is profoundly engrained. Underfunding agricultural education leads to low morale and rent-seeking behaviors of talented faculty members. There is a lack of incentives for quality (student-oriented) teaching suggesting that even minimal rewards may help to re-focus efforts.
- 10. Changes in the Underlying Paradigm From knowledge as dependent on externally fixed science • Farming Systems Research and Extension (FSR/E) • Agricultural Knowledge and Information Systems (AKIS) To a learning paradigm for managing complex adaptive systems • Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS) (Annor-Frempong and Jones, 2014) A shift from research to learning Learning is not something we do apart from the world we live in Knowledge and action are simultaneous
- 11. Fostering Technical Change in Agriculture How does adaptive management change agricultural education and training? What is the role of learning in the process of innovation? Is learning a matter of information transfer resulting in adoption of innovations? Or, is learning a matter of developing capacities for on-going adaptation? Whose capacities should be developed? Where does innovation occur?
- 12. Research Regulators Wholesalers Processors Production Ecology Producer OrganizationsCredit system Input suppliers Transporters Retailers Input producers GovernmentCivil Society Local Markets Extension Producers Consumers Export Markets An Agricultural Innovation System (AIS)
- 13. Innovation Brokers Main Functions of Innovation Brokers: Facilitating social learning Relationship building and brokering Analyzing the context and articulating demand Lobbying and translating innovation results Facilitating interaction between organizations Challenges include: • Formal education still reinforces top-down approaches • Acquiring and maintaining funding • Maintaining neutrality
- 14. Questions for moving forward Who is our audience? Should we focus on ministries of education? Should we focus on private sector schools and training institutes? Is the donor community the a key target for our messages? How does one assess capacity development for agricultural innovation systems? How does one target changes in organizational culture? How can we measure changes in organizational culture?
- 15. Vernon Ruttan in 1991 – author of “Induced Innovation” “The thing that bothers me is that the donors have consistently tried to avoid the issue of institution-building in Africa. In South and Southeast Asia in the 1950s, the donors were building the institutional capacity it took to create the growth that began in the 1960s. In the 1970s, we didn’t do it in Africa because we were on the basic needs and rural development kick. An agronomist was viewed as doing elite stuff. A plant breeder was even more elite. I think it’s time that the donors begin to take the issue of institution-building seriously or in 2010 we are going to be having this same conversation.” Statement presented at a Seminar on African development: Lessons from Asia. Winrock International: Morrilton, Arkansas
- 16. InnovATE is supported by a grant from USAID and managed by Virginia Tech’s Office of International Research, Education, and Development (OIRED). This project was made possible by the United States Agency for International Development and the generous support of the American people through USAID Cooperative Agreement No. AID-OAA-L-12-00002 Thank you Visit our website at: www.oired.vt.edu/innovate
Editor's Notes
- This is largely created when underpaid and under recognized college professors conduct lectures by reading from the notes they took in the same class decades earlier The scientific methods of observation and hypothesis testing are largely ignored. Problem-solving and critical thinking is largely absent. -> go to “Although experiential learning is valued and emphasized by faculty and administrators, the tradition of memorization is profoundly engrained. How about instituting a Teacher of the Year Award.
- 1 - This pushes us beyond the technology transfer framework. <read questions> 3 - We need to think in terms of a more dynamic interactive modality. We need to engage developing country farmers and non-farm stakeholders intellectually and emotionally in the promotion of sustainable intensification.
- Networks exist in historical space and time Traditionally, we have considered the triumvirate of researchers, extension agents, and farmers as the essential repository of relevant knowledge. But what if shippers don’t agree? Color coding here represents potentially distinct knowledge networks/cultures validation of salient knowledge by others is critical for system functioning All of these actors contribute to validation of the relevant knowledge necessary for system functioning. Members of these networks live in different socio-economic worlds on a daily basis and their languages and cultures vary, too. I often talk of “knowledge networks” – essentially subgroupings or clusters who share cultural norms, values and considerable tacit knowledge.
- This is largely created when underpaid and under recognized college professors conduct lectures by reading from the notes they took in the same class decades earlier The scientific methods of observation and hypothesis testing are largely ignored. Problem-solving and critical thinking is largely absent. -> go to “Although experiential learning is valued and emphasized by faculty and administrators, the tradition of memorization is profoundly engrained. How about instituting a Teacher of the Year Award.