Scaling-up Sustainable Land Management Practices through the Concept of the Rural Resource Centre: Reconciling Farmers' Interests with Research Agendas     

Takoutsing Bertin  Tchoundjeu Zacharie  Degrande Ann  Asaah Ebenezar  Tsobeng Alain 《The Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension》2013,19(5):463-483

Abstract

Purpose: Formal agricultural research has generated vast amount of knowledge and fundamental insights on land management, but their low adoption has been attributed to the use of public extension approach. This research aims to address whether and how full participation of farmers through the concept of Rural Resource Centre (RRC) provides new insights for the development of alternative and farmers-based extension methods.

Design/Methodology/Approach: Using the Concept of RRC, this research assesses the role of farmers in on-farm demonstrations and scaling-up of land management practices, and investigates effective ways to enhance beneficial interactions between researchers, extension workers and farmers in view of improving adoption.

Findings: The findings suggest that farmers can effectively participate in demonstrations and scaling-up of agricultural practices. This participation is enhanced by judicious incentives such as higher crop yields that motivate farmers and influence adoption. The current success of the approach stems from the fact that farmers, extension workers and researchers jointly implement the activities and their different aims were achieved simultaneously: scientific results for researchers, better agricultural practices for extension workers, and economic success and free choice for farmers.

Practical implications: This research concludes that farmers have the capacities to play an innermost role in demonstrations and scaling-up of agricultural practices. However, there is a need to build and strengthen their capacities to facilitate their participation and contribution.

Originality/Value: The article demonstrates the value of the preponderant role of farmers in on-farm demonstrations and scaling-up practices by exhibiting the beneficial interactions between researchers, extension workers and farmers.  相似文献   

A procedure to assess the suitability of plaster to protect vernacular earthen architecture     

Erwan Hamard  Jean-Claude Morel  Fernanda Salgado  Alain Marcom  Nicolas Meunier 《Journal of Cultural Heritage》2013,14(2):109-115

As part of a working definition of a new code of practice, this paper develops a methodology to determine the suitability of plasters manufactured on-site to protect the earthen walls of vernacular architecture buildings. Given the diversity of raw earth construction types, ranging from massive earth to stone masonry with earth mortars, and the variability of the materials used, two on-site tests (a shrinkage test followed by a shear test) were proposed. Those tests, as well as additional tests, were performed with lime/sand, earth/sand and earth with plaster admixtures. Lime/sand plasters do not typically pose shrinkage issues, which is why more earth based specimens were tested than lime based specimens. An analysis of the on-site testing complemented with laboratory tests reveals an antagonistic control of the bond between earth plaster and earthen wall based on clay content: an increase in the plaster clay content leads to increased bending strength, which strengthens the plaster and increased shrinkage, which weakens the plaster-wall interface. The heterogeneity of the wall leads to a wide range of results; therefore, this study was conducted to validate the formulation of plasters by means of shrinkage and shear tests at five different points on the wall. The shrinkage test allows finding the earth plaster formulations. Among all the validated formulations, the mason chooses the best one thanks to two criteria: the best workability (which is variable according to masons) with the highest clay content as possible. Then, when the formulation is chosen, the shear test must be done to verify if the bond between the plaster and the wall is high enough. This series of tests allows masons to validate formulations that will ensure good mechanical resistance of the plasters that protect buildings of vernacular earthen architecture.  相似文献   

The ‘aggressive style’: genesis of an ambiguous resource for Swiss hockey and football players     

Orlan Moret  Alan Traclet  Alain Clémence 《Sport in Society》2019,22(3):399-415

In this study, we investigated what drives players to endorse an aggressive style in Swiss ice hockey and football. We selected a sample of 16 players on the basis of their penalty statistics. We used semi-directed retrospective interviews to collect players’; biographic narratives. The results show a socialization process into an aggressive style, supported by the dominant gender and socialization norms of the sport, which is under the influence of the structure of the sports organization. However, there are large differences between players, with only some of them adopting an aggressive style. Although many studies have underlined the influence of moral disengagement, the present results suggest that time also matters and that the diversity of career paths may explain the diversity in attitudes. Socialization differences in the sports field, bodily capital, a career path marked by thwarted reputation are the key factors that drive players to adopt an aggressive style.  相似文献   

Learning for an Active Citizenship and Working Life: Main Challenges and Ongoing Innovations     

Alain Michel 《European Journal of Education》2015,50(4):379-382

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The role of two reading strategies in text comprehension: An eye fixation study in primary school children     

Menno Van Der Schoot  Alain L. Vasbinder  Tako M. Horsley  Ernest C.D.M. Van Lieshout 《Journal of Research in Reading》2008,31(2):203-223

This study examined whether 10–12‐year‐old children use two reading strategies to aid their text comprehension: (1) distinguishing between important and unimportant words; and (2) resolving anaphoric references. Of interest was the question to what extent use of these reading strategies was predictive of reading comprehension skill over and above decoding skill and vocabulary. Reading strategy use was examined by the recording of eye fixations on specific target words. In contrast to less successful comprehenders, more successful comprehenders invested more processing time in important than in unimportant words. On the other hand, they needed less time to determine the antecedent of an anaphor. The results suggest that more successful comprehenders build a more effective mental model of the text than less successful comprehenders in at least two ways. First, they allocate more attention to the incorporation of goal‐relevant than goal‐irrelevant information into the model. Second, they ascertain that the text model is coherent and richly connected.  相似文献   

Interaction styles and expert social influence     

Alain Quiamzade  Gabriel Mugny  Agatta Dragulescu Cléopas  Céline Buchs 《European Journal of Psychology of Education - EJPE》2003,18(4):389-404

An experiment examined the conditions under which an expert source induces less competent targets to adopt a point of view contradicting their own in a context of information transmission. In a 2×2 factorial design participants (N=86) were either 1st year or 4th year university students, and the style of the message delivered by the epistemic authority was either authoritarian or democratic. The main dependent variable was the degree to which participants went beyond mere approval and adopted the contradicting information. The principal finding was that the contradicting information was adopted more readily by the 1st year participants confronted with an authoritarian as compared to a democratic expert source. Students in their 4th year were more influenced by a democratic source than the 1st year students. These results partially confirm the correspondence hypothesis according to which appropriation of knowledge from an expert source is favoured when the characteristics of the influence relations match fundamental expectations that individuals have concerning this relationship, these expectations varying as a function of the stage they have reached in their university education.  相似文献   

Scholastic achievement, academic self-schemata, and normative clearsightedness     

Cyril Tarquinio  Alain Somat 《European Journal of Psychology of Education - EJPE》2001,16(1):117-129

This study based directly on Markus’s (1977) paradigm demonstrates the greater prevalence of an academic success self-schema in high academic achievers and of an academic failure self-schema in low academic achievers. The results also suggest that this achievementbased schema is modulated by clearsightedness (Py & Somat, 1991) in both good and poor students. Because more clearsighted individuals are probably better able to assess the arbitrariness of the reinforcement systems applied to their performance, they do not build the same schemata as less clearsighted individuals do.  相似文献   

Reading and spelling acquisition in two different teaching methods: A test of the independence hypothesis     

Jacqueline Leybaert  Alain Content 《Reading and writing》1995,7(1):65-88

The development of word reading and word spelling was examined in French speaking children initially instructed either by a phonic or a whole-word method. Second, fourth and sixth graders were administered to reading and spelling tests in which grapho-phonological regularity, frequency, length and lexicality were manipulated. The results showed that in both curricula, reading and spelling acquisition can be characterized by a parallel increase in the use of sub-lexical correspondences and in the reliance on word-specific information. Contrary to a simple view of lexical development according to which the use of analytical knowledge and the use of word-specific knowledge correspond to two different cognitive processes that develop independently from each other, whole-word children did not appear to rely more on whole-word knowledge. On the contrary, and paradoxically, grade 2 whole-word children tended to use analytical correspondences to a greater extent than their peers. In later development, reading matched phonic and whole-word groups did not differ from each other. It is argued that the results support the hypothesis that the acquisition of sub-lexical correspondences constitutes a necessary step in the acquisition of reading and spelling. We conclude that the analytic comparison of different curricula provides a naturalistic tool for the study of the dynamics of development.  相似文献   

Acids and Bases: The Appropriation of The Arrhenius Model by Tunisian Grade 10 Students     

Latifa Ouertatani  Alain Dumon  Malika Ayadi Trabelsi  Mohamed Soudani 《International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education》2007,5(3):483-506

In this work, we propose to identify the knowledge that Tunisian grade 10 students build up concerning acids and bases. Thus, after learning, we have proceeded by giving a paper and pencil task to students of two levels of teaching. The results obtained allow us to say that the assimilated knowledge is transitory; that the students have a worse perception of the base than of the acid concept and these two concepts are independent; that they associate the acid or base strength to its concentration; that the pH is far from being a “tool” of estimation of the degree of acidity; and that the students have difficulty in linking the empirical and the models’ registers. Moreover, some alternative conceptions that can be harmful to the learning of Brønsted’s model appear.  相似文献   

French research into the didactics and technology of physical activities and sportes: An expanding new field     

David  Bernard  Bouthier  Daniel  Marsenach  Jackie  Durey  Alain 《Instructional Science》1999,27(1-2):147-163

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