INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY 3(2+1)

Lesson 3 : Principles Of Teaching And Learning In Home Science Extension

Principles of Extension Teaching

Keeping in view the field extension agencies' problems and responsibilities following thirteen principles have been suggested which may be practiced for educating adults in informal settings.

1. Principle of cultural difference: The first important principle is the principle of cultural difference. For teaching to be effective the approaches and procedures must be suited to the culture of the people who are taught. The extension work is not same in all the parts. An important reason is that the cultural background of the people is different. It is different from area to area.

When a new extension agent goes into a community she learns about:

• Its history and cultural background,
• What values the people hold dear,
• How they proceed to reach their values,
• What organizations exist, and
• Who are the leaders in the community?
• The gender discrimination
• Social issues and problems of the women, adolescent girls and children.
• Technological interventions both at home & farm.
• How women are augmenting their income both at farm and home.

An extension agent must be alert to these differences if her work is to be effective.

2. Principles of cultural change: Change is the essence of growth and progress. With its growth and development extension has changed to meet cultural changes among the people.

The confidence of the people had to be won at the beginning or start of extension work. During the early days personal service was a key feature of the work. Rural people had to be convinced that extension agents had something of value to them, that science has practical value to rural people in the things they were mostly concerned with. The agent does this largely through personal help to an individual farmer or rural women who has the respect of his/her neighbors. When the farmer/farm women or rural women found through actual trial that the recommended ideas and practices brought desired results, he/she gained confidence in the extension agent. The farmer agreed to use his farm for a demonstration of a recommended practice. The malnourished children’s condition has improved with the intervention of the home science. Neighbors came and saw for themselves and told other. The word got around. The extension agent was worth something to them. They took ideas and practices based on the best scientific research and applied themselves. They had confidence in him/her. They could discuss their problems with him/her.

The educational structure of extension work grew. From these little beginning points it spread over the community slowly in some places and more rapidly in others. In the early days of extension work, emphasis was on improved practices in good production. Today there is increasing emphasis on improved marketing practices. Today rural women through their Self Help Groups (SHG’s) entered into marketing their produces unlike previously by men. As needs of rural people change, extension work has changed. The emphasis in extension work years ago were quite different from those of today. Likewise those of today are quite different from the emphasis year ago. Extension work changes as conditions change.

3. Grass-roots principles of organization: Group of rural people in local communities sponsor extension work. Country extension workers enlist the interest of these local groups in farm and home practices and programmes originating and fed the programmes to the local conditions. In many communities the initiation of extension work was fostered by the agricultural college, but the work was not introduced until there was a local group sufficiently interested in sponsoring it. The aim of the local group was to demonstrate the value of the new practices or programmes so that more and more families would participate.

4. Principles of cooperation: Extension work is cooperative. The basis for its operation is cooperative agreements made between department of agriculture, agricultural colleges, and the rural people themselves. The extension service cooperate on national programme, so that rural people may understand the provision and decide whether the programmes will contribute to their welfare.

5. Principle of interests and needs: Extension work is a system of voluntary education.

To be effective it must begin with the interests of families. It must meet those . interests, and use them as a spring board for developing further interests. Many times the interests of the rural people are not the interests of extension worker. Even though he see the needs of the people better than they do themselves.

6. Participation principle - learning by doing: Growth results from participation in the solution of problems. Good extension effort is directed toward assisting rural families to work out their own problems rather than giving them readymade answers. People who study their own problems and work out solutions are more likely to assume responsibility for their own programmes and develop leadership in their work. Experience in these things creates self confidence. They learn by doing.

In developing responsibility for leadership, a local farmer is frequently called upon to preside at a meeting. The extension agent usually sits in the audience and is called upon for scientific information relating to the discussion. At times he may act as secretary of the meeting.

It takes patience and time in getting people accustomed to participate in group work, to reach the point where they assume initiative and responsibility. They learn through encouragement and by doing. Education is often a slow process.

7. Adoptability principle in the use of teaching methods: People differ from one another. Groups differ from other groups. Conditions differ. No one teaching method is effective under all situations. Reading materials are useful and effective for those who can read; radio programmes for those who have radios; meeting for those who can attend; demonstrations of recommended practices are for those who can see the farm on which the demonstration takes place. Farm and home visits are the most valuable method, but take considerable time.

Extension agents have found that they need an inventory of teaching methods from which to select to suite local conditions. They think of their set of methods as a kit of tools to draw upon in getting a teaching job done, much as a scientist in his laboratory has equipment to draw upon in getting a research job done. At times new methods must be devised to meet new situations and changing conditions. The use of teaching methods must have flexibility.

8. Leadership principle: It is not possible for village extension worker to reach to thousands of families personally. But he/she can do so if he/she is able to identifying voluntary workers from the communities. Such leaders are not to be imported from outside, but they are there. It is merely a question of identifying, encouraging and training them. These leaders are local people. They are unpaid, in the training and visit programme this approach was used very much by local leaders to multiply the educational efforts of extension agents manifold.

9. Principle of trained specialists: For continuously keeping the extension agencies informed of latest technology development, the directorate of agriculture/Home Science specialist, and governments work as connecting link between research and practice.

10. Satisfaction principle: As rural families observe satisfactory results of extension work they look to it for more help. The principle needs little elaboration. It is the key to the success of the work. It is the key to develop local volunteer leaders, who receive no salary. Extension agents are quick to see that volunteer leaders must obtain more than money satisfaction if the leader agent, for the work well done, encourages continuing volunteer leadership.

11. Whole family principle: Extension work is of the whole family or of both the sex of family, boys and girls; men and women. There is work in agriculture for the men and home extension for the women. Projects in agriculture and home making are designed to develop leadership and to create favourable attitudes towards the use of scientific information. Discussion programmes are held timely and important questions are encouraged.

The boys and girls who have participated in the activities have greater confidence than other boys and girls.

Although extension work among farmers, farm women and youth appears to be separate at first glance, there is much overlapping and integration in the family approach of extension work.

12. Evaluation principle: Extension work is based on a belief of scientific method. Careful studies are made to determine how well the work is progressing, the degree to which extension is reaching, where and what can be done to improve it. The effectiveness of the work is measured, so far as it is possible to measure the people resulting from the teaching process.

13. Principle of applied science and demoncracy: The methods of science are an essential part of the democratic process. Extension work seeks to accomplish this in agriculture and rural living. Extension work translates scientific findings developed in the laboratories and on experimental farms in such a way that farm families can voluntarily adopt them to fulfill their own needs.

The results of research give a factual basis for the correction of common superstitions and unfounded beliefs that arose in the past from inaccurate observations and were passed along from generation to generation in the folk ways of the people.