Extension Modalities

• Model


  A systematic description of an object or phenomenon that shares important characteristics with the object or phenomenon. Scientific models can be material, visual, mathematical, or computational and are often used in the construction of scientific theories.
• Model


  • a usually small copy of something
  • a system or thing used as an example to follow or imitate
  • a particular type or version of a product (such as a car or computer)
  • a set of ideas and numbers that describe the past, present, or future state of something (such as an economy or a business)
• Transfer of Technology (TOT) Model

  • Dominant in 1950s
  • Linear process
  • Sees the farmer as passive recipient of new technology

  
• Paulo Reglus Neves Freire

  Brazilian educator and philosopher, known as a leading advocate of critical pedagogy
• Banking approach to education


  • Learners are considered empty bank accounts that should remain open to deposits made by the teacher
  • Memorization as a key element
  • The teacher plays an active role, while learners or students assume passive roles in their teacher-student relationship
• Perceived farmers as adopter or rejecters but not originators of technology
• • A farmer is progressive if he adopts the technology
  • Failure to adopt is attributed to psychological factors
• Feedback model


  • Feedback is considered to be weak
  • Users remain passive recipients of technology and the feedback function solely rests with the extension service
• Adaptive Technology Transfer (ATT) Model

  • Location-specific requirements of technology and farmers' behavior are not considered as barriers to adoption
  • Adapt new technology to local conditions and removing the socio-economic constraints of adoption by farmers
  • Prevalent in 1970s and early 1980s
  • Still linear in process with limited feedback from farmers
  • Training and Visit is based on this model
  • Failure for resource poor farmers operating under diverse ecological conditions with complex cropping systems, poor or absent input markets and high risk climatic conditions

  
• Farming Systems Research (FSR) Model


  • Emerged in 1970s and prevalent in 1980s
  • Emphasis on discoveries made by farmers themselves
  • Goals and constraints from on – farm trials and farmers' participation in the testing of new varieties or methods, and instituting interactive feedback mechanism between farmers and researchers
  • Constraints of the resource-poor farmers are taken seriously and the likelihood and such constraints can be removed is treated with caution

  
• Farmer-Back-to Farmer Model


  • Successful research must begin and end with farmers
  • Designed to improve two-way communication
  • Farmers and extension personnel are actively involved in the research process
  • Views farmers as co-researchers, developers, and extensionist as in development of technology transfer models

  
• Farmer-First-Farmer-Last (FFFL) Model


  • Entails a fundamental reversal of learning and research strategy
  • Research problems and priorities are identified by needs and opportunities of the farm families rather than by the professional preferences of the scientist
  • It sees the starting point of development as an active and equitable partnership between rural people researchers and extensionists
  • The outsiders are viewed primarily as catalysts or facilitators of the open exchange of ideas
  • The model emphasize the importance of rural people's knowledge, which they believe can be blended into scientific pool of knowledge
  • The authors claim that greater participation of farmers in on-farm research will result in a technology development process more attuned to local conditions and properties
  • Conventional on-farm research largely designed and managed by external researchers was thus transformed into Farmers Participatory Research (FPR) where farmers become the central actors in research and experimentation process

  
• Beyond Farmer First (BFF) Model


  • Highlights are gender, ethnicity, class, age and relation having important implications for research and extension practice
  • It emphasizes that different types of local and non-local people hold many divergent, sometimes conflicting, interests and goals, as well as differential access to vital resources
  • Lacks certain analytical depth and presents more radical programme that incorporate socio-politically differentiated views of development
  • Knowledge, which is diffuse and fragmentary, emerges as a product of the discontinuous and inequitable interactions between the actors i.e. researchers, extensionists and farmers
• Farmers can be taught improved forms of experimentation using scientific method
• Some farmers already follow scientific methods of inquiry
• It contends that effective linkages with formal science are best affected through those farmers who follow such method of analysis
• Emphasis on farmers' own experimentation