Is Extension Relevant for the 21st Century?
As a 90-year-old artifact of the days when an agrarian economy dominated society, is it possible for Extension to still be relevant? As the primary outreach and public service function of land-grant universities, the relevance of Extension is tied to the perception and reality of the relevance of these host institutions. Did the recent ECOP report A Vision for the 21st Century and other ECOP statements address whether Extension remains relevant to the 21st century context? Extension educators are assisting communities of place and of interest and involving more university and agency colleagues in responding to changing citizen education needs. URL: https://8907224.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/8907224/Urban%20Extension/Is-Extension- relevant-for-the-21st-Century.pdf
Define. Distill. Deploy. Adopting 21st-century competencies for high-impact talent
Job descriptions should come stamped with expiration dates. Given the speed of business, any standard list of duties and responsibilities will go stale much faster than a box of cereal. To build the kind of dynamic workforce that holds its value even when deluged by new challenges, organizations need a 21st-century competency framework. URL: https://8907224.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/8907224/Urban%20Extension/KFI-WP- Competency-Define-Distill-Deploy.pdf
What Every Extension Worker Should Know – Core Competency Handbook –
This handbook is designed as a reference manual for front-line extension staff to use in their day-to-day work. It offers a set of tools for effective communication, program planning and evaluation. It is meant to support and educate agricultural extension workers worldwide. The intended audiences of this handbook include: governmental agriculture, fisheries, natural resources and community development ministry officials; governmental and non-governmental extension district/regional managers; extension-related faculty and their students — preservice extension workers; and field-level agents, whether governmental, non-governmental or for-profit. We hope that this handbook will help advance efforts to empower and continue educating extension personnel through in-service training opportunities, continuing education programming and “train -the- trainer” progr ams. Such efforts may include targeting specific tools of interest to audiences and inviting scholars/practitioners to teach participants about them. Agricultural extension and advisory services are transitioning from a focus on technology transfer to a focus on facilitating a range of interventions in complex contexts. No longer is extension first and foremost a conduit of innovations coming from research and passing them on to farmers. Today’s agricultural extension and advisory services are being challenged to serve as the connecting actor in complex agricultural innovation systems. The role of extension in agricultural development is continuously evolving, and effective front-line staff members need skill sets that may differ from those they learned in school.
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