ERIC Number: EJ1196622
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2018
Pages: 19
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1366-5626
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Social Learning in Smallholder Agriculture: The Struggle against Systemic Inequalities
Leta, Gerba; Stellmacher, Till; Kelboro, Girma; Van Assche, Kristof; Hornidge, Anna-Katharina
Journal of Workplace Learning, v30 n6 p469-487 2018
Purpose: Ethiopia operates a large agricultural extension service system. However, access to extension-related knowledge, technologies and agricultural inputs is unequally distributed among smallholder farmers. Social learning is widely practiced by most farmers to cope with this unequal distribution though its practices have hardly been documented in passing on knowledge of agriculture and rural development or embedding it into the local system of knowledge production, transfer and use. The purpose of this study is, therefore, to identify the different methods of social learning, as well as their contribution to the adoption and diffusion of technologies within Ethiopia's smallholder agricultural setting. Design/methodology/approach: A mixed methods approach was used, comprising farmer and expert interviews, focus group discussions, informal individual discussions and key informant interviews. The data were documented, coded and later analyzed using SPSS and ATLAS.ti. Findings: The findings showed that 55 per cent of the farmers in the studied areas fully relied on social, community-level learning to adopt agricultural technologies, while 35 per cent of them relied on social learning only partly. Farmers acquired knowledge through social networks by means of communication, observation, collective labor groups, public meetings, socio-cultural events and group socialization. Informal institutions such as iddir, debo and dado, helped farmers learn, adopt and diffuse technologies. Originality/value: This study used the concept of epistemic oppression by Dotson (2014) as a conceptual framework to examine farmers' access to extension services and to analyze how informal institutions serve as workplace learning for the smallholder farmers. The authors suggest community-level social learning serves as a coping mechanism against the prevailing limitations of the formal extension system, and at the same time, it guards against the deepening of social, political and epistemic inequalities that are inherent to the knowledge system.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Extension Education, Agricultural Occupations, Access to Education, Rural Areas, Teaching Methods, Informal Education, Social Networks, Interpersonal Communication, Observation, Cooperation, Meetings, Socialization, Information Technology, Social Influences
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Ethiopia
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
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