Meaning

Meaning

  • Programme planning is a division of making process which give direction and intensity to extension education efforts of extension services to bring about economic, social and technological change.
  • Programme planning is a procedure of working with the people in an effort to recognise unsatisfactory situation or problems and determine possible solutions or objectives and goals. This is a conscious effort to meet the needs interests and wants of the people for whom the programme is intended. The elements of people’s needs become a central concern of planners for rural development.
    In making a programme, the following questions give key orientation and justification:
      What needs do people have?
      • How can needs be identified?
      • What plans of priority should be set up for meeting people’s needs?
      • What resources are necessary to meet people’s need?
      • How should resources be organised and directed to help people meet their need?
  • In programme planning, we are required to know where we are now and where we ought to go so that we may better judge what to do and how to do it? It gives meaning and system to action. It prepares the basis for a course of future action. It is an intentional effort carefully designed to attain certain specific and predetermined goals assumed to be important.
    1. Extension programme planning is process:
  • The dictionary meaning of process is any phenomenon which shows a continuous change in time or any continuous operation or treatment. If we accept this concept of process, we view events and relationship as dynamic, ongoing, ever changing an continuous. When we label something as a process we also mean that it does not have a beginning an end a fixed sequence of events. It is not static, at rest. The basis for the concept of process is the belief that the structure of physically reality cannot be discovered by man it must be created by man.
  • This definition of process suggests that a process is involved in which a series of actions culminates in the accomplishment of goal (Boyle 1965). Viewed in this way, the concept of process involves a method, i.e., a process should be viewed as a sequential set of steps or several systematically ordered steps of planning, the performance of which leads to the accomplishment of a goal. In extension programme planning, the immediate goal would be the development of a programme document.
  • The concept a person has of the extension programme planning process will affect actions and mode of researching the process. Many programme planning process take place at any particular time at different levels of the extension organisation. For example, programme planning occurs at the national level, at the state level and at the block level. In fact, planning at the block level is lacking place when
      i. They long time plan or projected plan is being developed.
      ii. The schematic budget is being planned
      iii. The annual plan of work is being developed
      iv. Detailed plans for individual having experiences are developed within a major project.
    2. Extension programme planning is a decision making process:
  • Planning is basically a decision making process and so is extension programme planning. In execution programme planning. Scientific facts are put to value judgements of the people through the implementation of rational planning model in order to decide a programme which will be carried out through the extent on teaching activities.
    3. Extension programme planning requires advance thinking:
  • If we could know where we are and where we are to go. We could better judge what to do and how to do. This statement lies at the heart of the nature of planning. Planning does not takes place in a vaccum or automatically. It has to be made to happen.
  • The most basic fact giving rise to planning is that effective rural development results from choice, not from chance; it results from design, not from drift. Good extension programme planning is an intellectual activity since it usually involves a study and use of acts and principles. It requires knowledge, imagination and reasoning ability. It is a complex exercise as it involves people, their needs, thin interests, useful technology, educational process, analysing a situation and making decision about what should be done, determining useful actions, projecting the desired shape of things in future and several other components, which are rarely simple.
    4. Extension programme planning required skill and ability on the part of planners:
  • Planning effective extension education programme require a number of high level professional skills. Needed abilities include understanding and skill in the following broad areas,
      a. Understanding the nature and role of extension education organisation.
      b. Knowledge and understanding of the technology related to the subject with which the programme is concerned.
      c. Ability to clarify the objectives of a programme and to so state them that they are useful in guiding its execution.
      d. Skill at seeing the relationship between principles and practice.
      e. Skill at inquiry and human relationships.
    5. Extension programme planning is built around content:
  • A programme reading any extension activity can only be built on the basis of content. Without some express purpose, there can be no planning. Extension programme planning is built around available improved technology, the people, their resources, problems, needs and interests.
    6. Extension programme planning is a social action process:
  • Extension programme planning involves interaction and the decisions so taken in the form of a programme effect others. Interaction assumes some type of communication between two or more people in the planning process. So when the extension staff involving specialists and peoples representatives decides out the programme content for extension teaching for the coming year it is involved in social planning. In this process, the scientific data is put to value judgements as so to decide the intended direction of change and also the appropriate methods to be used to reach these goals. Further, the resultant programme has many social consequences it terms of interaction with other people. Eg: To inform them educate them, persuade them, in order to introduce improved technology into their minds and actions.
    7. Extension programme planning is a collaborative effort:
  • Extension programme planning is a collaborative effort involving identification assessment, evaluation of needs, problems, resources, priorities and solutions.
    8. Extension programme planning is a system:
  • Extension programme planning is a system as its procedures and processes are interrelated, ordered and linked progressively to form a collective whole. It includes several sub processes, such as planning designing, implementing, evaluation etc.
    9. The end product of extension programme planning is an extension programme:
  • The first consideration for anyone who is to concern himself with a process or set of procedures for planning is to clearly identify the primary purpose of the planning process to be developed. Many have suggested that the purpose of planning is for educating those who participate.
  • According to Vandeberg (1965), the primary purpose of any planning, first and foremost is that of developing a sound, defensible and progressive course of action or plan. In the process followed, many other benefits might occur such as the education of participants, but we want a plan which can and will be used.

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Last modified: Saturday, 3 March 2012, 12:03 PM