Faculty of Education - Theses

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/11343/162

Filters

1977 1
Reset filters

Settings
Statistics
Citations
Author: Carnegie, Alastair B × End date: 1979 × Start date: 1960 × Type: Masters Coursework thesis × Subject: Victoria ×

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Continuing education for farmers in Victorian agricultural colleges
    Carnegie, Alastair B ( 1977)
    The rural industries are undergoing major structural changes which are causing increasing pressures on farmers. One of the ways that farmers can cope with these changes is to become more professional in their management. Fewer young people are entering farming today and the average age of farmers is rising so tba.t the emphasis in agricultural education is shifting towards providing more continuing education for practising fanners. Post-secondary education is under increasing criticism from educators, Governments and society largely. because of its failure to provide equality of opportunity and for its emphasis on youth centred education at the expense. of adults. Lifelong education is now seen by many educators as the guiding principle which will enable everyone to have learning opportunities throughout their lifetime. Recurrent 'education is proposed as' an alternative educational strategy to permanent education and its theme is an alternation between education and other activities, such as work and. leisure, throughout life. A key feature of a system of recurrent education is that it is the Learner who controls the direction of the learning. This paper reports the results of a survey which set out to determine the needs for, and attitudes towards continuing. education amongst 200 practising farmers. It was found that educational attainment, youth, and other, farmer characteristics .were. positively related to participation and interest in continuing education. Agricultural colleges were seen as playing a vital role in providing opportunities for continuing education but that certain improvements in the planning, financing and timing of their activities would increase their use by farmers. There is an increasing need for TAFE, which is the ideal post-secondary, system for implementing the principles of recurrent education, to play a more active part than it has in supporting continuing education for farming. The big challenge Mt-Agricultural educators is. how to motivate- the- majority of farmers to participate in training. activities. This could be met initially by Government supported overbridging education.