Towards a competency profile for the role of instruction of agricultural extension professionals in Asfahan

This thesis is aimed at developing a competency profile for instructors in the agricultural extension service in the province of Esfahan in Iran . These instructors are part-time subject matter specialists who cooperate with the Ministry of Agriculture and teach short-term extension courses in different disciplines to farmers. Previous research revealed that the target group of the research generally experience many problems in their role of instructor during extension courses for farmers. The PhD project was conducted to develop a competency profile for this role in the next three to five years. In doing that, a comprehensive review of the literature was carried out, the competency models presented by McLagan (1982) were selected and adjusted to the Iranian extension system, and were tested for the role of instruction. To increase the reliability of the model, different respondents were involved: participating and non-participating farmers in extension courses, agricultural experts, agricultural managers, and instructors. The research carried out in the project is presented in this book, which contains three main parts and nine chapters. The first chapter is the general introduction, which provides the literature review, problem statement, research design, definition of concepts, study area and the outline of the thesis. Part one of the thesis presents four farmers' studies, part two encompasses two agricultural experts' studies and part three includes the key study of the research and the synthesis. In the synthesis chapter the implications of all previous chapters about the competency profile of the target group are aggregated and the model is triangulated. The findings of this research show that the evolution of agricultural development and extension has not been convincing during the last decade and that farmers were confronted with many unexpected changes and problems in their work. The Ministry of Agriculture (MAJ) has supported farmers to a limited extent, and much more support is needed in the future. However, the governmental extension services are assumed as being the most important information source for farmers. Farmers were generally pleased with the services of the extension organization and with their courses, as well as with the instructors, but they expect revisions in evaluation methods, the use of instructional technologies, and the duration of the courses and follow up strategies delivered by the instructors. The most important motives of farmers for participation in the courses were performance improvement and personal development. Respondents of the key study (chapter eight) gave high scores to all components (future forces, ethical issues, outputs, standards and competencies) of the competency profile of the instructors. It was concluded that instructors should perform additional roles apart from instruction. New general and common competencies were inserted into the final version of the competency profile of the instructors. Ultimately, this research revealed that designing a common competency profile for instructors is possible but the profile should be differentiated based on the stratification of the farmer population by variables such as gender, age, level of education, and motives for course participation. Further research is proposed both for the role of instructors and other human resource professionals in the field of agricultural extension in Iran . Also, repeating this study at national and international level, also in different sectors, could enhance professional development in various occupations and thereby socio-economic development in these sectors, and could further elaborate the instrumental use of the model.