Linking learning environments through agricultural experience — enhancing the learning process in rural primary schools

International Journal of Educational Development 21 (2001) 135–148www.elsevier.com/locate/ijedudev

Linking learning environments through agriculturalexperience — enhancing the learning process in rural

primary schools

Peter Taylor*, Abigail MulhallHelvetas Vietnam, GPO Box 81, Hanoi, Viet Nam

Abstract

Research, underpinned by the concept of contextualisation of teaching and learning, was undertaken in Tanzania,Sri Lanka, India and Ethiopia. It examined the way in which teachers in rural primary schools link the formal schoolcurriculum with the life experience of their pupils, particularly in relation to agriculture. Curriculum constraints, effortsby teachers, a supportive environment and linking the school and community were the main issues identified as criticalfor improving school effectiveness. Based on the findings, a series of action points relating to contextualisation oflearning in rural primary schools are suggested for policy makers and researchers. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. Allrights reserved.

1. Introduction

Three international reports published in the lastfew years (World Bank, 1995; UNESCO, 1996a;Delors et al., 1996) recommend strongly that pri-mary schooling in developing countries shouldreceive international support. They suggest thatthis level of education has the potential to build acapacity for life-long learning in individuals,develop knowledge, skills and attitudes in youngpeople, and contribute to the general developmentof the community in which individuals live bymeeting manpower needs and improving com-munity life. In agreement with this view, thegovernments of most countries in the world haveset themselves the goal of achieving universal pri-

* Corresponding author. Fax:+844-8329834.E-mail address:[email protected] (P. Taylor).

0738-0593/01/$ - see front matter 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.PII: S0738 -0593(00 )00036-5

mary education for all. Despite high investment,however, studies of primary schooling indeveloping countries (Berstecher and Carr-Hill,1990; Lockheed and Verspoor, 1990; UNESCO,1992; Little et al., 1994; UNESCO, 1996b) con-tinue to reveal low participation, high drop-outrates and under-education of pupils in many cases.Constraints on primary schooling include inad-equate necessary inputs, a lack of facilitating con-ditions and an absence of support from policy mak-ers, school administrators and communitymembers (Levin and Lockheed, 1993).

Many of the problems affecting primary school-ing in developing countries, especially those asso-ciated with socio-economic factors, are difficult toresolve since they cannot be addressed easilythrough educational reform, but require action bya wide range of stakeholders, including the govern-ment, local communities and schools. In order toaddress these problems, governments will need to

136 P. Taylor, A. Mulhall / International Journal of Educational Development 21 (2001) 135–148

support improvements at school level by creatingenabling policy and by supplying resources, notonly material, but also through the reform ofteacher training, learning materials production andcurriculum development. Examples of such inter-ventions have included reviews of teacher trainingprogrammes, curriculum reform (although theissue of contextualisation, discussed later in thispaper, has not been explicitly focused upon) andthe development of new approaches to schoolorganisation, in countries as diverse as Sri Lanka(Baker, 1989), Brazil (Harbison and Hanushek,1992), Kenya (Black et al., 1993), India (Black etal., 1993; Seshadri, 1993) and Colombia(Colclough and Lewin, 1993; Colbert et al., 1993).Some successes have been reported, but primaryschooling in many parts of the world continues tobe plagued by the problems outlined above.

2. Rural primary schools — are theydisadvantaged?

Although there is no doubt that many primaryschools in both urban and rural areas of developingcountries suffer from severe problems and con-straints, it could be argued that, because of the gulfbetween an urbanised curriculum and the realitiesof rural life, children who live in rural areas ofdeveloping countries are “disadvantaged”1 in com-parison with their urban counterparts. In ruralareas, parental income levels are often low, andso financial contributions to schooling from non-government sources may be negligible. Many ruralhouseholds are dependent on their children for helpat busy times of the agricultural year, for exampleat harvest time. Timing of the school day and ofterms is often designed to fit more with an urban,

1 It is important to note that within the broad category of“children from rural areas”, there will be children also whomight individually be termed “disadvantaged”, since their parti-cular circumstances are even less conducive to enable them toperform effectively at school than their peers, either because oftheir immediate social situation, or because they have specialeducational needs. In many rural areas where the most basicresources are in short supply or absent altogether, their specialneeds are even less likely to be met.

industrialised system, which expects children toattend school during busy periods in the agricul-tural calendar. The curriculum and accompanyingexamination system is often rigid and inflexible,set at an inappropriate level, with an origin whichemanates from a cultural or societal backgroundfar removed from that of the rural learners(Ekanayake, 1990; Bennet, 1993). Large numbersof children in rural areas do not go beyond the pri-mary cycle for socio-economic and geographicalreasons and because of the urban focus of the edu-cation system. Parents in rural areas are likely tohave received less formal education than theirurban counterparts and may attach a lower valueto schooling. Homes, and indeed schools in ruralareas, are often ill-equipped to meet the needs ofchildren to study; for example, with an absence ofelectricity. Children may come to school under-nourished and in poor health, placing enormousstress on a teacher who may have to deal with alarge number of pupils of different ages in acramped, under-resourced environment.

In practice, therefore, a lot of what goes on inrural primary schools may differ quite markedlyfrom what is propounded by policy makers andcentralised curriculum developers. This is mainlybecause national educational programmes seemoften to be geared more closely to an urban contextwhere the locus of control of curriculum develop-ment processes for schools is usually found(Rogers and Taylor, 1998).

3. Contextualising learning

Irrelevance of the rural primary school curricu-lum to the life experience of the pupils seems tobe an enduring problem (Singh, 1988; Ekanayake,1990; Levin and Lockheed, 1993). Many attemptshave been made to adjust the content of the cur-riculum so that it becomes relevant to local con-ditions. In practice this has often meant the intro-duction of some “localised” topics and activities,for example, agriculture and other skill-based sub-ject areas (White, 1990). Achieving localisationand relevance of the curriculum was a key goalof the “community school” movement (Bacchus,1982; Bude, 1985).

137P. Taylor, A. Mulhall / International Journal of Educational Development 21 (2001) 135–148

Relatively little emphasis has been placed, how-ever, on the development of appropriate strategiesfor curriculum development and teaching andlearning that are based on the immediate contextin which the school is located (UNESCO, 1994).Graham-Brown (1991) suggests that the content ofeducation programmes, the methods by whichlearning is facilitated, and the materials used to thisend should be pertinent to the experience and cul-ture of the learners. Taylor and Mulhall (1997)describe the process by which this is achieved ascontextualisation of teaching and learning.

Contextualisation draws on a constructivist per-spective, in which a learner constructs his or herown knowledge as a result of experience whichstems from living and interacting with animate andinanimate objects in the environment (Duit, 1991).For young children, much of this experience occursout of school, but the school still has a critical rolein providing additional experience which willenable a child to understand complex, conceptuallearning of skills, for example in science, math-ematics and languages. The challenge for primaryschools is to find ways of relating those areas ofteaching required and laid down in centrally-planned curricula to the pupil’s own personalexperience of life, and thus to integrate the entirelearning experience by linking learning environ-ments.

In many rural areas of developing countries,agriculture is the main livelihood and is an activitywith which the majority of rural children are incontact on a daily basis. Most rural primary schoolpupils have direct, first-hand experience of agricul-ture, either as a result of their own activities incontributing to the family livelihood, or fromobservation of their immediate surroundings.Agriculture may be used as a medium for contex-tualising part of the curriculum as it provides anavenue for children to have repeated experiencesand so helps them to master cognitive, physical andsocial skills. Agricultural topics could be the basisof integrated projects incorporated in the schoolcurriculum, with academic activities chosen fortheir locally relevant, experimental attributes.Metaphors and analogies could be based on agri-cultural activities and experiences, thus enhancingthe acquisition of literacy, numeracy and the skills

of basic scientific reasoning within the confines ofa subject-based curriculum.

Using agriculture2 as a basis for teaching andlearning in rural schools is not an original concept.Coverdale (1972) recommended the application ofa rural bias to the whole basic syllabus in order toprovide meaning and relevance, whilst Ravi andRao (1994) emphasise the value of using the localenvironment with which children are familiar, andupon which the teacher and the children can drawfor information and materials. Agriculture does,therefore, seem to provide an ideal, general contextfor learning in rural primary schools. To apply thisconcept in practice it is necessary first to analyseand attempt to understand, in collaboration withmembers of a community, the learning environ-ments in which a school operates.

4. Linking learning environments — aresearch study

The learning environment of an individual is acomplex, multi-faceted system which could beanalysed in many different ways. In order to gainsome understanding of the learning environment ofrural primary school pupils in developing coun-tries, a research study3 was carried out on behalfof the Department for International Development(DFID). This study aimed to explore three keylearning environments for school-going children;the school, the home and the wider community.From the observations made above, it may be con-strued that these three learning environments are

2 The term agriculture used in this study does not refer tothe curriculum subject area of agriculture which is still foundin primary schools in some countries, although the subject areaof agriculture does of course present many possibilities for link-ing school, home and community learning. On numerousoccasions during the research process confusion arose as theassumption was made that the researchers’ interest was in teach-ing agriculture rather than the use of agricultural experience asa means of making all learning more meaningful and relevant.

3 Full details of the background, methodology, results anddiscussions emanating from this research are provided in a two-volume report (Taylor and Mulhall, 1997). The research builtupon an earlier literature review of teaching and learning prac-tices in rural primary schools (Taylor, 1996).


Fig. 1. Linkages between school, home and communityenvironments.

often rather weakly linked and the experiencesgained in each, although individually of greatvalue, are seldom drawn together and integratedin the learning process. This “distant” relationshipbetween learning environments is illustrated inFig. 1.

The existence of weak linkages between thethree learning environments infers that the experi-ences gained by pupils in school are often per-ceived to be divorced from life outside school, notonly by pupils but also by parents and teachers. Bystrengthening these linkages and maximising theinterfaces between learning environments, thenlearning should become more effective (Fig. 2).

It is clear that there will be many constraints

Fig. 2. Linking the learning environments.

which prevent these learning environments fromlinking closely. It is uncertain, for example, howparticipation by community members in the schoolenvironment may be facilitated; the involvement oflearners is often, at best, passive. The degree ofengagement of school teachers with the externalcommunity is also highly variable. The main pur-pose of the research study, therefore, was to inves-tigate in four national settings the perceptions ofdifferent groups (teachers, pupils, parents and pol-icy makers) about teaching and learning in thethree learning environments. This would lead to agreater understanding of the relationship betweenthese environments, with a view to suggestingways in which these linkages (if any) might bestrengthened.

Specifically, the research aimed to discover therole of agricultural experience as a vehicle for con-textualising learning in a context where the needsof learners are extremely diverse and whose lifeexperience had been enriched by agricultural prac-tice. A second aim was to examine how agricul-tural experience could be used in rural primaryschools to support the development of young rurallearners’ basic skills of literacy, numeracy, andother life skills which are perceived as necessaryfor a fruitful and productive life. The researchattempted, therefore, to highlight the problemswhich might arise in attempting to use agriculturalknowledge and experience in such an innovativeway and to identify examples of good practicewhich would be of use to educational policy mak-ers and practitioners.

5. The research methodology

An initial desk study (Taylor, 1996) was carriedout, in which the concept of contextualisation wasexplored, and evidence gathered from a wide rangeof settings. Based on this evidence, the concept andmethodology for the research was developed by theauthors of this paper in partnership with nationalresearchers in four countries (Ethiopia, India, SriLanka and Tanzania). A qualitative, case studyapproach was selected, since it was apparent fromthe review of the literature that there had been verylittle field research into classroom practices in rural


primary schools in developing countries. Specifi-cally there seemed to have been no studies whichexplored the role of agriculture as a vehicle forcontextualising learning.

It was accepted that a case study approach suchas this might limit the extent to which findingscould be generalised. The authors believed, how-ever, that important lessons could be learned byfocusing effort and resources more intensively ina small sample of locations, thus gaining a deeperunderstanding of the learning environments in aspecific context. This could lead to the identifi-cation of policy issues and options for furtherexploration on a wider scale, for example throughlongitudinal study.

Case studies were carried out in two schools ineach country. Field work of one week in eachschool was undertaken to obtain an understandingof the particular school in relation to the key issues.In each country, one case study school was selec-ted on the basis of its reputation as an “innovative”school, according to a set of criteria agreed by theresearch partners. The second school was selectedaccording to its reputation as an “average” school.A qualitative, triangulated approach was adopted.Semi-structured interviews were held initially withkey informants (policy makers, educationalists,researchers) to obtain their views on the presentstate of education in the country. Appropriateliterature and reports were also consulted to pro-vide background information on the national,regional and local contexts of the school. In theschools, data collection was achieved throughobservation, semi-structured interviews and par-ticipatory activities, namely order ranking, pair-wise matrix ranking and mapping (Mulhall andTaylor, 1998). Separate interview schedules wereconstructed for use in semi-structured interviewswith the headteacher, teachers (two groups of fourteachers per school), pupils (group interviews ofsix to eight per group) and community members(group interviews of four to six per group). When-ever possible the pupil group consisted of equalnumbers of boys and girls. The majority of teach-ers in all the schools were women, which meantthat there was always a higher proportion of femaleteachers in each group. For the interviews withcommunity members, the researchers worked with

whoever responded to the invitation from theschool headteacher; the proportions of men andwomen varied considerably in these groups.

6. The case study schools

A wide variety of data was collected from thecase study schools. The findings of the research(which include extensive descriptions of the pre-vailing national and local educational policyenvironment in each of the four countries) aredescribed in detail elsewhere (Taylor and Mulhall,1997; Mulhall and Taylor, 1997) and it is not thepurpose, nor the capacity, of this paper to presentthe entire picture. To highlight the conditions inwhich the schools existed, however, the Tables 1–4provide a summary of the eight case study schools.Since the research process was iterative, basic datacollected varied slightly from country to country,hence certain data provided in some tables beloware not presented in others.

7. Issues arising from the case studies

7.1. Curriculum constraints

Teachers in all the schools were constrained bythe fact that they had to complete a given curricu-lum within a set period of time. Teachers in everyschool visited stated that they thought the curricu-lum was too full and too rigid. Some teachers alsocomplained that the curriculum was changed fre-quently by the Ministry of Education, but little orno assistance was then provided to help teachersunderstand and implement new curriculum require-ments.

Project work and topic-based learning were notin evidence in the majority of the schools visitedduring this research. In all four countries in thestudy, the school timetable was divided into shortperiods and was subject-based, so that teachers feltcompelled to cover the subject matter exactly aslaid down in the teachers’ guide. As a teacher inKarnataka, India explained:


Table 1Summary of Tanzania case study schools

Factor School A School B

Type Primary PrimaryYears 1–7 1–7School grounds Small, neglected garden area No school gardenNumber of pupils m:f (total) 264:276 (540) 344:388 (682)Average monthly family income Tanz. Sh. 3000 per day Unknown but less than for school AMain source family income Coffee/maize/bananas/beans Coffee/maize/bananas/beans; livestockAverage distance between school and home 2 km 3 kmAttendance rate 92 (%) 74 (%)Repetition Zero Not knownTeacher:pupil ratio 1:32 1:45Major social problems Poverty Poverty, malnutritionNo. of families 600 450No. of teachers m:f 2:15 (17) 3:12 (15)No. of years principal at school 4 10Percentage of teachers with initial teacher 100% 100%trainingDonor support None World Vision

Table 2Summary of Sri Lanka case study schools


School grounds School experimental plot No school gardenYears 1–9 1–11Type Type 3 difficult school Type 2 schoolNo. of pupils m:f (total) 112:101 (213) 124:167 (291)Average monthly family income Rs. 250–750 Rs. 2500–3000 (uncertain)Main source family income Rice/maize/chenafarming Vegetable/rice farmingMain income is farming 98% 90% (70%)Samurdhi 50% (+29% on other grants) 60%Attendance rate 70% girls, 85% boys 65%Drop-out 1.3% 10.0%Repetition 7.5% No dataTeacher:pupil ratio 1:23 1:18Major social problems Poverty Poverty; mothers abroad; alcoholism and

drug abuseAdult literacy rate 30% 98%No. of families 233 30–40/village, seven villages close

togetherNo. of teachers m:f 8:2 2:14No. of years principal at school 7 5Donor support Yes (international donor) None

Forty minutes is not long enough to teach likethis (child-centred learning); if we do we willnot be able to cover the curriculum.

Teaching aids and materials, particularly those

which relate to the local context, were often inshort supply or lacking altogether. Where theywere available, teachers’ guides and pupils’ text-books often used urban-based examples whichwere supposedly familiar to children. A teacher in


Table 3Summary of India case study schools


Type of school Government higher primary school Government higher primary schoolClass 1–7 1–7No. of pupils M:F (total) 241:192 (433) 202:214 (416)Average monthly family income Rs. 1000 Rs. 3000Main source family income Agriculture AgriculturePoverty alleviation programmes State aid programmesAttendance rate 80% 80%Drop-out 10% No dataRepetition 10% 10%Teacher:pupil ratio 1:48 1:52Major social problems Poverty PovertyAdult literacy rate 33% 20%No. of families in village (m:f) 415 (1543:1432) 520 (1828:1508)No. of teachers m:f 3:6 4:4 (inc. principal)Experience of teachersNo. of years principal at school 6 2Donor support None NoneCaste structure 80% SCa, 20% other 80% Vokkaliga, 16% SC, 4% other

a SC — schedule castes.

Table 4Summary of Ethiopia case study schools


Grades 1–8 1–8Shift system for classes No Two shiftsNo. of pupils m:f (total) 701:350 (1051) 698:463 (1161)Main source family income Agriculture AgricultureAttendance rate 80–92% 90%Enrolment rate for area 45% naa

Drop-out 4.2% 10%Repetition 2.2% naAverage teacher:pupil ratio 1:40 1:45Adult literacy rate (region) 5–25% naNo. of teachers m:f 20:6 19:7

a na — not available.

a Sri Lankan school expressed her feelings onthis matter:

Textbooks need changing, they should bemore flexible so that they can be made relevantto the child’s environment. It (a textbook inwhich there is a problem to solve about speed)uses buses and trains in Colombo as the problemexample. The majority of rural school children

have never seen a train, never been on a bus andnever been to Colombo.

Regular teacher absences meant that a great dealof “catching-up” had to be done as well, leavinglittle time available in the lesson for teachers to tryanything other than “banking” (accumulation) ofknowledge. Pupils in the “average” schools visitedin this research were rarely required to participate


actively in lessons, other than to repeat by rotewhat had been said by the teacher or to sing andclap. This seemed to result in the creation of a per-ception by the public of primary schooling quitedifferent to that desired by policy makers, asexpressed by a parent in Karnataka:

Those who come home after 7 years aresometimes more dumb than those who neverwent to school.

Evaluation of learning was also extremely diffi-cult for teachers in the schools visited in Tanzaniaand Ethiopia, where large numbers of pupils werecrammed into small desks in a dark classroom withfew, if any, aids or materials for teaching andlearning. Demotivation of many of the teachersinterviewed seemed to discourage interest in thedevelopment of innovative practices, and theabsence of regular support meant that those teach-ers who did experiment with alternative teachingand learning methods felt unsure and unconfidentwhether they were on the right track.

7.2. Efforts by teachers

Even with the constraints experienced inschools, there is evidence from the field researchand from the literature that many teachers doattempt to contextualise learning by relating thecontent of the curriculum to the experience of theirpupils. This is achieved by using general exampleswith which pupils are thought to be familiar.Health and nutrition topics are often related to thehome situation, for example. Although such stra-tegies are common, it became clear from the casestudies that the majority of teachers who used sucha practice were not aware of its real potential. Dur-ing classroom observations, contextualisedexamples were often given on an ad hoc basiswhen it became clear that a concept was provingdifficult to understand. It was difficult to discoverto what degree teachers planned to draw on theexperiences of their pupils. Some teachers inter-viewed in the case study schools in Tanzania statedthat the value of using locally relevant exampleshad been discussed during pre-service training, but

they could not recall or suggest ways in which sucha practice could be planned.

Teachers who had established a rapport andunthreatening relationship with the pupils in theirclass were more likely to tolerate and welcomeclassroom discussion, and even pupils presentingideas or writing on the blackboard. Some teachersinterviewed said quite specifically that pupilsseemed to understand an abstract concept moreeasily when examples were given with which thepupils were familiar, as the following statementsby teachers illustrate:

If we try to teach Science from a book it isa completely new subject. If we relate it to thepupils’ home environment it is more relevant.

We see many shapes around us, fields, plantsetc. that we could use in teaching Mathemat-ics — I would like to know what else I coulduse in the environment in teaching.

Children understand better as they know it issomething that can be used in practice. If it isrelated to in practice, they can make connectionswith textbooks.

There was a general desire amongst teachers formore in-service training, and probably the teacherswho participated in the research realised that therecould be the potential for some further training asa “follow-on” to the initial research phase. It wasinteresting that the researchers experienced dif-ficulty initially in reaching a common understand-ing of the concept of contextualisation with mostteachers. In fact, teachers were being asked toreflect on their pedagogical practice in thisresearch, and it was clear that they were rarelycalled upon to do this explicitly in their normalworking lives.

During the research, groups of teachers andpupils were asked to rank, in order of preference,different strategies for helping pupils to learn moreeffectively. The overall view given by the teachersin the case study schools was that pupils learn mosteffectively when taking greater responsibility for


their own learning, and being actively involved inthe learning process. This may have reflected theseteachers’ experiences of pre-service training, dur-ing which, it was reported, child-centred teachingstrategies were emphasised strongly. The way inwhich teachers and pupils interpreted certain peda-gogical practices varied4 both within and betweenschools, thus emphasising the complexity ofmethodological planning for teachers with limitedawareness of pedagogical approaches, or the con-fidence to use them.

On several occasions, teachers stated that theyhad learned a lot from being involved in theresearch process, and would even use some of themethods developed to gather information in theirown teaching. On two occasions when return visitswere made to case study schools, innovative stra-tegies were observed being put into practice; forexample a class in India carrying out “free draw-ing” and a group of pupils in Ethiopia creating amap of the village in the school garden using earthand sowing flower seeds. This outcome suggeststhat interventions such as support and opportunitiesfor professional development, even on a relativelysmall scale, may have a considerable influence onthe pedagogical practice of some teachers.

7.3. A supportive environment

The research revealed a number of factors whichseemed to influence the use of agricultural experi-ence as a means of contextualising teaching andlearning. Firstly, where teachers had used innov-ative practices, support seemed to be crucial. Thissupport may have come from the headteacher,from pupils, from other teachers, parents, policymakers, school advisors or inspectors. Donor sup-port or recognition of a school as a “model” or“pilot” school (as was the case in two case studyschools in Sri Lanka and India) also seemed toraise the prestige of the school in the locality. Thisin turn appeared to be a motivating factor for tea-chers and pupils, and encouraged community

4 Different interpretations were placed on pedagogical prac-tices such as “pupils talking about their own experience” or“practical activities” (in a school in Tanzania, “practical activi-ties” were taken to mean pupils writing in their books).

members and parents to be more supportive of theschool and its activities.

The influence of the headteacher in the casestudy schools seemed central to the developmentand use of innovative teaching practices (an issuediscussed in detail by Harber and Dadey, 1993).Where a collegial atmosphere was created, andstaff of a school felt that they could discuss freelyproblems and complex situations with each otherregardless of position in the school hierarchy,experimentation and innovation had an opportunityto flourish. Pupils, parents and teachers in Indiaand Sri Lanka seemed to place more value orrespect upon a headteacher who originated fromthe locality of the school, as they had usually hada deep understanding of the local language or dia-lect, culture, and environment. Support fromschool inspectors also seems critical. In the Tan-zania case, school inspectors were described as dis-couraging teachers from attempting to use alterna-tive methods of teaching and learning for fear thatthe situation might go out of control.

The policy environment is a critical issue. Thenational policy statements of all four of the casestudy countries appear to favour the use of contex-tualisation in schools, although it is never referredto explicitly. For example, the 1994 Education Sec-tor Strategy of the Ethiopian Government statesthat “the content of the curriculum will be revisedto be relevant to the needs of the community …science teaching will … be properly linked withday to day activities of the students”. In a similarvein, an Indian educational policy statement(Department of Education, 1994) highlights thefact that the content and process of educationshould “better relate to the environment, people’sculture and with their living and working con-ditions, thereby enhancing their ability to learn andcope with the problems of livelihood and environ-ment”.

Unfortunately, although policy statements seemsupportive, teachers’ guides did not reflect this.Teachers said that they felt wary about movingaway from what was laid down on the printedpage, even though they might be surrounded byrich and varied resources outside the classroom andschool environment. The rigidity of primary schoolcurricula and examinations seemed to discourage


teachers from moving beyond the boundaries of thesubject area, and frequent curriculum changes leftteachers feeling that they had enough to cope with,just to cover the subject matter. Large class sizes,shortage of time, and a lack of confidence in deal-ing with classroom organisation all contributed toteachers feeling that they could not move easilybeyond the use of traditional talk-based teaching.

Some pupils and parents stressed that theythought it valuable to base new learning on whatis known already.

If I learn from books I forget, if my parentsshow me how to do it on the farm I remem-ber (pupil).

Doing practical work and learning what isaround them (the pupils) is better than lookingat pictures in books (parent).

Ultimately, the main educational target for pupilswho participated in this research was to pass theirexaminations at the end of primary schooling and,to this end, parents were strongly supportive. It wasexplained on a number of occasions that manymembers of rural communities who have a verylow income were prepared to offer part of the littlemoney, materials or farm produce they possessed(for example bananas in Sri Lanka, seeds, oxen orlabour in Ethiopia) to assist with the developmentof their local school or, in some cases, to furtherthe chances of their children progressing to second-ary school by paying for private tuition. Parentsand pupils interviewed were of the opinion thatschools should do whatever is necessary to givepupils the best chance of achieving a successfuloutcome from primary schooling. One Ethiopianparent reflected on his own life experience:

I started school at the same time as my friend,but I dropped out after grade 3. He continuedto grade 12 and is now a very successful, well-off farmer — education is important.

Some parents interviewed said that they foundit easier to understand what their children werelearning when it was based on an agricultural con-

text with which they were familiar. They said thatthey felt able to talk to their children and were notembarrassed by their apparent ignorance of “schoolknowledge” if the learning context, even thatcentred around abstract concepts, was familiar tothem. This also raised parental interest, and some-times even led to adoption of techniques. In SriLanka, for example, school pupils learned aboutcomposting as part of basic science teaching. Theythen went home and explained to their parents howto make compost. As a result, many parents hadintroduced composting as a regular practice in theirhome gardens. One parent in Sri Lanka said that “itis good when they talk about cooking or agriculturebecause we can relate to these activities and learnfrom our children”.

7.4. Linking school and community

The research revealed many examples of howcommunity and family life was brought “into theclassroom”, and related to the direct experience ofpupils. Health and nutrition topics were oftenrelated to the home situation. Where agriculturewas the topic of a lesson, the pupils’ experiencesof their farming practices at home were frequentlydrawn upon. In several schools, pupils brought inagricultural materials such as plants, seeds or food-stuffs, which were then used by teachers to helpexplain abstract mathematical concepts. In inter-views, both teachers and pupils indicated ways inwhich use of agricultural experience had assistedthem in understanding some aspect of the curricu-lum. A teacher in Tanzania cited an example ofteaching English to his pupils where he wasattempting to explain the word “bunch”. Pupils haddifficulty grasping the meaning of this term untilthey were taken outside and shown a bunch ofbananas on a tree. According to the teacher, “myteaching aids are outside … it makes a picture andthe pupils understand”. An Indian mathematicsteacher described how he had taken pupils into therice field opposite the school to illustrate to pupilshow straight lines and angles were used in practice.Another teacher said that he could refer to sheepin lessons on counting, as many of the pupilsherded sheep. Where pupils were required to learnabout wild animals, the starting point would be


domestic animals with which all pupils were fam-iliar. Some pupils did recount occasions on whichthey had discussed what they learned at schoolwith their families. Using examples from a contextfamiliar to parents relieved a certain embarrass-ment that arose when parents realised that theycould not understand curriculum topics which werequite new to them. Many mothers of pupils in thecase study schools had received very little formalschooling, and yet it was with the mothers thatmany pupils interviewed clearly related moststrongly. As a result of relating school learning tothe agricultural context, a more supportive andunderstanding learning environment at home couldbe created.

There were examples, too, of how schoolsreached out beyond their boundaries into the com-munity. Pupils were sometimes taken by their tea-chers to the school garden or to neighbouring farmswhere they performed activities based on andrelated to subjects such as geography. Farmingthemes were often used as a basis for languageteaching, and discussions were sometimes based onthe experience of a visit to a local farm or ruralenterprise.

In Ethiopia and Sri Lanka, very practical, con-textualised teaching approaches were observed. Inone Sri Lankan school, pupils carried out practicalactivities in an experimental agricultural plot andthese same activities were then used to help pupilslearn mathematics concepts or to support Englishlanguage teaching. In an Ethiopian school, pupilswere also observed undertaking simple experi-ments using agricultural materials. Teachers statedthat as a result of using the experimental plot,pupils’ curiosity and questioning had increased,asking such questions as “How do we increase theyield of this crop? What new technologies canwe use?”.

These cases have an interesting implication forstrengthening links between school and com-munity, as shown in Fig. 2. Some pupils hadpassed on their experiences in the agricultural plotto their parents, according to comments from par-ents and teachers during interviews. A number ofparents interviewed said that they had now becamemore aware of major issues such as soil erosionand other environmental problems, and claimed

that they were able to produce more food as aresult of implementing the techniques they hadlearned from their children. It seems, therefore, thatthe use of a contextualised approach to teachingand learning had, in these cases, resulted in thestimulation of an unplanned extension process,which was surprising in areas where policy makershad concerns about low uptake by farmers of agri-cultural technologies promoted by the localgovernmental extension services. The approachappeared to be encouraging the development of athree-way learning system between parents, pupils,teachers and the community. So, in addition tomore easily identifiable strategies for bringingcommunity experience into the school environ-ment, this is one example of how contextualisinglearning in rural primary schools through the useof agriculture may help to strengthen the link fromthe school into the community. This may contrib-ute to a breaking down of barriers between the dif-ferent learning environments (home, school,community) and thus create a context more con-ducive to learning.

8. Complexities and challenges

It is apparent from the research that teachertraining and support is a critical factor if the pro-cess of contextualisation is to be adopted in ruralprimary schools. In order to contextualise teachingand learning, teachers will need to aid their pupilsin utilising, acknowledging and relating to theirown experience, and introduce new experienceswhich link and build upon those which existalready. This requires that teachers learn from andabout the different environments in which theirpupils live their lives, and interpret and understandthem in a way which leads to the development ofappropriate teaching and learning methods andmaterials.

Teachers need encouragement to reflect on theirpedagogical practices, and to question their atti-tudes towards “real learning”. Classroom obser-vations revealed that many teachers do use a rangeof pedagogical practices on a daily basis, but inter-views suggested that they were not always awarethat they were doing this. Awareness of successful


approaches to teaching and learning may well con-tribute to the development of more innovativepedagogical strategies, but this increases thedemands on teachers. Many teachers carry a veryheavy burden already. Ways of supporting teach-ers, both materially and psychologically, will haveto be found which enable and encourage them todevelop new strategies and approaches withoutbecoming completely demoralised and exhaustedin the process. This will require commitment frompolicy makers to reducing the constraints whichteachers face on a regular basis.

Another important factor to consider is that con-textualisation strategies adopted by schools may bemisinterpreted. During the field research there wasconsiderable discussion with pupils, teachers andcommunity members about what “real learning”consists of. School pupils from several countrieswondered whether learning subjects through themedium of agriculture was “real”. What is learnedat home, and particularly, what is learned aboutagriculture through personal experience seemedoften to be undervalued because of the elevationof formal school learning to a more prestigiousposition.

Parents may feel that teachers who draw on theirchildren’s “ordinary” out-of-school experience are“watering-down” the national curriculum, thus pre-venting their children from taking and passingexaminations, acquiring a fully-recognised quali-fication, and therefore impeding the chances oftheir children in gaining employment or pro-gressing to higher levels of the education system.Any agricultural component or reference intro-duced through a process of contextualisation mustbe integrated in an appropriate and meaningfulway. Parents should be aware that reference toagriculture or the local environment is not dimin-ishing the value of schooling in any way, butinstead creating the potential for an outcome fromprimary education which they feel is very desirablefor themselves and for their children. Involvingparents more intensively with schooling bystrengthening school and community linkages mayhelp to alleviate parents’ fears that the introductionof alternative or innovative approaches will createeven further limitations to the futures of their chil-dren. For example, if parents come to value innov-

ative agricultural techniques which they learn fromtheir children and implement themselves, leadingto improvements in agricultural production andtheir household economy, the perceived legitimacyof agriculture as a basis for some school teachingmay be enhanced.

The research demonstrated that care needs to betaken where strong views are held about home andfamily life as an acceptable topic for discussion inschool. In addition to enabling teachers to developalternative practices, there is a need to raise aware-ness through advocacy with pupils, parents andcommunity members that contextualisation ofteaching and learning can enhance the possibilityfor children to pursue and attain a wide range ofgoals in life.

9. Some suggested action points for policymakers and researchers

This research has revealed many opportunitiesfor further research into the contextualisation ofteaching and learning in rural primary schools. Ashas been stressed in this paper, this research studysought to illuminate the reality of teaching andlearning in a small sample of rural primary schools.Much more research is needed, but the limited evi-dence available supports conextualisation. Theredoes seem to be potential for some of the manyproblems facing rural primary schools to beaddressed by policy makers through the develop-ment of models and strategies for education pro-grammes which are based on a process of contex-tualisation.

Based on the findings of the research, the fol-lowing areas seem to be worthy of research andintervention:

O encouragement and facilitation of the develop-ment of educational practices (teaching andlearning strategies, development of learningmaterials, assessment and evaluation pro-cedures, curriculum development), which valueand take into account the knowledge, experienceand culture of school members and the widercommunity;

O provision of training and support for teachers


and trainers in rural primary schools and in thelocal community who will base strategies forteaching and learning on a process of contex-tualisation;

O facilitation of the development of structures andfunctions in schools and training organisationswhich complement and support the process ofcontextualisation adopted by teachers;

O evaluation of the impact of contextualised learn-ing on the development of knowledge, skills andattitudes of learners, in schools and in thewider community;

O evaluation of the impact of contextualised learn-ing on community productivity levels, employ-ment, and on academic progression of learnersand teachers;

O studies of the effect of contextualisation stra-tegies on parental opinion of the value ofschooling.

As a result of research and intervention in theseareas, the following outcomes may be achieved:

O self-supporting groups of teachers and trainerswith the capacity to adapt and develop curricula,within the framework of educational policy,through a process of contextualisation;

O creation and adoption by rural schools and train-ing organisations of structures and functionswhich support and enable the process of contex-tualisation;

O readily adaptable, sustainable resources ofinnovative methods and materials for training,teaching and learning, shared and disseminatedthrough networks of teachers and trainers;

O strategies and models for planners and prac-titioners which may facilitate the integration ofexperience and knowledge of learners into basicand community education programmes in differ-ent locations;

O indicators and guidelines for decision makers atnational and international level to consider whenplanning the overall structure of school andcommunity education programmes, and to assistdonors in making policy decisions relating toeducational funding.

10. Putting contextualisation intoperspective — a final note

It is clear that contextualised teaching and learn-ing will never be the solution to all problems facingrural primary schools. Regardless of changes in thecurriculum which aim to relate learning moreclosely to the local environment, economic andsocial constraints in rural areas will continue todeter many of the poorest families from sendingtheir children to school. In Ethiopia, for example,teachers noted that many parents did not place ahigh priority on schooling since they could not seeany material benefits resulting from it, and foodsecurity was believed to have greater value. Insome countries, more far-reaching structuralchanges may also become necessary and arealready being explored, such as adapting the schoolyear of rural schools to fit more closely with theagricultural cycle, so that children who areexpected to participate in agricultural activities willbe able to do so without missing out on schooling.Such change in the macro-environment should notlimit the efforts of change and the potential forinnovation at a local level, however. If teachers,pupils and community members in rural areas canbe supported to find ways of establishing, buildingand maintaining relationships based on mutuallearning and respect, then there may be a greaterchance of building a conducive and effective learn-ing environment which draws on the wealth ofexperiences gained in school, home and com-munity.

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Linking learning environments through agricultural experience — enhancing the learning process in rural primary schools