Despite the significant proportions of rural Americans, schools, and public school students situated in the geographic peripheries of an increasingly urbanizing country, rural education in the United States has consistently occupied both scholarly and policy peripheries. This is to the detriment of rural America, especially to the extent that…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse knowledge systems and channels of innovation diffusion in Tajikistan. In particular, I look at the formation of agricultural advisory services (AASs) and how these provide a vital source of knowledge and innovation for farmers during the transition process. Methodology: Empirically, this paper draws…

Prior studies of ethanol location rest on the assumption that ethanol producers are economic free agents--evaluating sites as if all counties are contenders for their business, weighing the availability of feedstocks along with their infrastructure needs, operating without ties to localities, and being subject to enticement from policy incentives.…

Purpose: The article reflects on transition management in rural areas and the possible implications for extension services able to support social innovation and rural change, starting from experiences on social farming in different areas of Italy. Design/methodology/approach: By presenting three case studies we investigate the role of social…

This study investigated the extent to which personal factors relate to the utilization of development information in the rural communities of South-South Geo-political Zone, Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive survey design. The population comprised all adult male and female rural dwellers from the three out of the six states in the Zone…

Drawing on the findings of empirical research conducted in the South West of England, this paper explores how farmers make sense of re-emerging imperatives for "food security" in UK policy and political discourse. The analysis presented is based on two types of empirical inquiry. First, an extensive survey of 1543 farmers, exploring the…

The paper critically assesses the more turbulent period in agri-food since 2007- by applying a transitions perspective to a range of empirical data collected from key private and public stakeholders in the UK during that period. It argues that increased volatility and a series of interdependent landscape pressures on the dominant agri-food regime…

Apart from their contribution to the local economy in terms of input, output and employment, farmers also play a major role in shaping and maintaining our (natural) environment and landscapes. However, with the (planned) decrease in agricultural subsidies, these activities are at risk. For that reason, it would be useful when farmers could benefit…

This article documents and analyses the uneasy, if not contradictory, relationship between service learning and liberal arts thinking in an undergraduate programme in Global Development Studies (GDS) at a North American University. As an undergraduate, Cororaton participated in a service-learning project to build a greenhouse in Mongolia; at the…

Both the Portuguese appropriation of the lifelong learning policy proposed by the European Union since the mid-1990s and the definition of adult education policy in Portugal were based on a discourse that emphasised an "unacceptable educational deficit" for democracy. The role of the State in the "governance" of the public…

The study of the sociopedagogical resources of the countryside, the village ["selo"], is of vital importance both for science and for the revival of the Russian countryside; for the upbringing, education, and social protection of the new generation of citizens; and for the creation of a socially safe environment in which the population…

Dominating strands within the research literature on second homes explain social conflicts between rural hosting and visiting second home populations by describing their differing perspectives on rural development. Such presentations suggest that locals are likely to welcome new developments in order to enhance the economic viability of their…

Training is a key tool for community development processes in rural areas. This training is made difficult by the characteristics of the rural areas and their population. Furthermore, the methods used by traditional training bodies are not adapted to the peculiarities of these areas. This article analyses the training methodology used by the…

Purpose: This study sought to explore how farmers' knowledge attributes influence the technical efficiency of their farms. In addition, farm efficiency was compared to the actual Macedonian Rural Development Programme (RDP) (2007-2013) and instruments considered to improve Macedonian education potential were evaluated. Design/methodology/approach:…

Can reading a book about a boy and a hen in Ghana make a difference to fifth graders in their Michigan community? Indeed, it can, and in myriad ways. At a suburban elementary school in Michigan, the authors introduced fifth graders to economic concepts in a project-based learning (PBL) unit. They began by reading aloud and discussing the picture…