Gender Equality in Agricultural Education

Women play an important role in Agriculture, especially in developing countries. Promoting gender equality is crucial for agricultural development and food security. Agricultural extension services have a long tradition of working predominantly with men and only 15 percent of the world’s extension agents are women. World Bank has suggested“Increased women’s enrollment in agricultural courses” as one among the strategies when addressing gender issues in the education and training components of agricultural development projects. In this context the study was carried out to ascertain the representation of women and their academic achievement in agricultural education. The study revealed that almost equal representation was found for women in agricultural course and they were also provided better quality education in their schooling, in the form of English medium education and education in private schools. Recent trends for the past four years showed a higher percentage of enrollments of women in agricultural course than men. The growth rate was also higher for the female students. Women also showed a significantly higher percentage of academic achievement than men. These positive indicators provide sufficient signals for equality of women in agricultural course and have positive implications for development of the agricultural sector in future

Management Characteristics and Adoption Index of Indigenous Agricultural Practices by Rice Farmers

The study was conducted in Vellore district of Tamil Nadu, to assess the relationship between Management characteristics of farmers and their adoption of Indigenous Agricultural Practices (IAPs) in Rice cultivation. One hundred and twenty Rice growing farmers were purposively selected from five blocks of Vellore district for the study. Thirty eight IAPs for Rice cultivation as listed in Tamil Nadu Agricultural University Agritech portal were selected for the study and the adoption index regarding these technologies revealed that majority (65%) of the respondents had ‘medium’ adoption index. With regard to the management characteristics studied, majority of the respondents had medium level of management orientation (75.00%), coordination ability (70.80%), risk orientation (75.80%), self-confidence (69.20%) and self-reliability (56.70%). The study also revealed that therewas a positive and significant relationship with regard to self-confidence and self-reliance of the farmers with the extent of adoption of Indigenous Agricultural Practices. Risk orientation had a negative but significant relationship with extent of adoption. Training the farmers to improve their management skills could lead to better adoption of the indigenous practices

Exploring the Psychological Antecedents of Attitude towards Indigenous Wetland Practices

A study was conducted in the North eastern agro-climatic zone of Tamil Nadu, India to analyze the possible impact of the psychological antecedents of attitude towards Indigenous Wetland Practices(IWPs) among the farming community. Two hundred and nine farmers were selected at random from ten blocks in three districts of the state. Their psychological characteristics and attitude towards IWPs were assessed. The mean attitude score and the mean attitude index were analysed. The highest variable index was found in the case of Progressivism and Traditionalism, followed by Self-Reliance. Environmental orientation and Decision making ability had a positive and highly significant relationship while Scientific Orientation had a negative and highly significant relationship with attitude towards Indigenous Wetland Practices.

Understanding Learning Style Variations among Undergraduate Students

A study was conducted in Vellore district of Tamil Nadu state to understand the learning styles of students. The term learning style refers to the way or method or approach by which a student learns. The study explored the possible learning style variations among agricultural, horticultural, engineering and arts & science students and their association with academic achievement. One hundred and twelve students were randomly selected from the four streams and their learning styles were analyzed. In the agricultural and horticultural streams, a majority of the students were auditory learners. They were also found to be predominantly unimodal learners. Overall, it was found that majority of the students were visual learners followed by auditory and kinesthetic style. The highest percentage of kinesthetic learners was found among engineering students. Trimodal learners scored the highest mean percentage of marks. The influence of learning styles on the academic achievements of the students did not show a significant relationship

Introduction: Reading and Writing the t/Terror Narratives of Black and Brown Girls and Women: Storying Lived Experiences to Inform and Advance Early Childhood through Higher Education

Staples and Jayakumar introduce this issue of the Occasional Paper Series that speaks to the #SayHerName social justice initiative. The movement aims to expose the experiences of Black and Brown girls and women who are subject to police violence in society and various violences in schools. In response to this movement, this issue includes stories of Black and Brown women from early childhood education through higher education

A High Efficient High Input Power Factor Interleaved Boost Converter

In this paper an improved ZVT interleaved boost PFC topology is introduced. The proposed ZVT interleaved boost converter is composed of two cell boost conversion units and an active auxiliary circuit. The proposed converter has two important advantages over the similar soft switching converters. The first one is that parallel to the main switches of the converter the auxiliary switch also operates under soft switching condition. Providing soft switching conditions for interleaved boost converters with more than one cells using only one auxiliary switch is another advantage of this topology. The prototype for the proposed converter was developed with an input of 110V-220V ac power supply feeding a resistive output load of 600 watts. In addition, the proposed converter has the advantages of fewer structure complications, lower cost and ease of control.DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijece.v2i3.25