This causal comparative study assessed differences in the way fall and spring semester student teachers spent their time performing various duties: observing, teaching specific curricula, laboratory instruction, activities outside of school, and supervision of Supervised Agricultural Experiences (SAEs). It was found that fall semester student teachers spent more time observing than spring semester student teachers. Additionally, fall semester student teachers spent more time in school overall than spring semester student teachers; spring semester student teachers spent significantly more time out of school during school hours. In terms of curriculum, both fall and spring semester student teachers devoted the most instructional time to teaching Agriscience I and II. Both groups spent approximately the same amount of time instructing in a classroom or laboratory setting. It also was found that spring semester student teachers devoted more time to supervising students' SAEs than did their fall semester counterparts.
The increasing number of unemployed and underemployed youth across the globe, especially in developing countries, has reached alarming levels. In Africa, for example, this phenomenon has led to some youth making treacherous journeys across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe and other parts of the world in search of better livelihoods. Such an influx of immigrants, primarily to Europe and North America, has caused resentment and outcries by many citizens of the affected nations. Some of these challenges, however, could be allayed by engaging youth in income-generating projects, including agricultural entrepreneurship, i.e., agripreneurship, to create jobs and improve livelihoods. This may be achieved through Youth-Adult Partnerships (YAPs) by which youth and adults work together on agricultural projects of mutual interest. This study explored the experiences of adult partners in Uganda who collaborated with youth on their school-based, agripreneurial projects (SAPs) involving the raising of broiler chickens. Because of their partnership working on SAPs, both the youths’ and adults’ knowledge and understanding of concepts related to agripreneurship and raising of broilers chickens improved. The need exists to provide an enabling environment to promote an agripreneurial culture among youth through Y-APs if we seek to inspire them to pursue agripreneurship and related opportunities for job creation while also enabling the food security of communities and improved livelihoods for their citizens.
Keywords: agripreneurship; improving livelihoods; project-based learning; school-based agripreneurial projects; youth unemployment; youth-adult partnerships
Interest in entrepreneurship education by scholars and practitioners as a way to overcome poverty is growing. Yet little is known about how entrepreneurship can be a successful approach to achieving prosperity in resource-poor conditions. Entrepreneurship has been mainly associated with the view of entrepreneurs as super humans capable of solving all problems, especially if operating in resource-rich contexts. This qualitative study’s purpose was to explore, through photovoice methodology, the entrepreneurial opportunities involving agribusiness and ecotourism that Nicaraguan students recognized in their communities. Photovoice allowed the researchers to gain in-depth information from students who expressed in images what may have been difficult to explain in words. The students recognized different opportunities linked to their contexts as expressed through photos documenting local assets and materials. The study participants also indicated interests in doing social good, which suggested a more societally oriented view of entrepreneurship. The poor, including youth often marginalized, were able to recognize business opportunities in concert with their economic conditions. Opportunity recognition may be one of the more promising ways to overcome poverty. Its facilitation holds implications for agricultural, tourism, and rural development curricula and educational programming.
Keywords: entrepreneurship education; opportunity recognition; photovoice; resource constraints; youth
Although service-learning (SL) has shown promise, its adoption as a method of instruction in secondary agricultural education remains tentative. As such, this philosophical investigation examined how resistance to SL might be uniquely manifested in the context of teacher preparation and the implications for agricultural education if viewed through the lens of Rogers’ (2003) diffusion of innovations theory. After synthesizing related research and theory, we argue the method of instruction’s barriers to adoption include not only a misalignment between teacher educators’ beliefs and practices, but also result from a lack of knowledge, including (a) awareness, (b) how-to, and (c) principles (Rogers, 2003). We also posit that contextual influences at three levels – personal, institutional, and societal – drive or constrain teacher educators’ knowledge of SL during the innovation-decision process. By reframing the problem in this way, implications emerge regarding the difficulties teacher educators may experience as they cross contextual borders and attempt to overcome the knowledge deficiencies likely to influence their pedagogical decision-making. In this regard, we offer an expansion to Rogers’ (2003) innovation-decision process so teacher educators can forecast, isolate, and address better the contextual challenges and knowledge-related problems likely foregrounding their resistance to adopting SL as a method of instruction.
Keywords: Diffusion of Innovations theory; innovation-decision process; resistance; service learning; teacher preparation
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