Additional Resources

This week we are wrapping up the first course theme: Education as Innovation, where we explored the notions of diffusion, the effects of education, and the special contribution of agriculture to development.  We'll be moving into Access to Education and Employment, which focuses on the barriers to accessing quality education and employment.

Have lingering questions about poverty, education and agricultural development?  Want to learn more about diffusion of innovations?  Curious to learn more about the barriers to education and employment?

I encourage you to spend some time with the books from which we pulled our select class readings.  These resources address other facets of poverty and development that are outside the purview of this course.  Additionally, seriously consider reading Rogers' entire Diffusion of Innovations and spend some time looking at current and historical studies that have utilized this model.

• Banerjee, A. V., Benabou, R., Mookherjee, D., & Case, A. (2006). Understanding poverty. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780195305203. 

• Banerjee, A. V., & Duflo, E. (2011). Poor economics: a radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty. New York: PublicAffairs. ISBN: 9781586487980.

• Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations 5th ed. New York: Free Press. Chapter one available on ANGEL.

 I also recommend the work of Amartya Sen, a Nobel Prize winner who writes about famine, poverty, health and education in the developing world from a very unique viewpoint.

Also, an alternative way of learning more about these issues is to look at the open course (MOOC) offered by MIT on global poverty.  It's just like attending a class - you get a syllabus, the required readings, assignments and exams and then you can watch videos of the course lectures.  The course I've linked to is actually taught by Banerjee and Duflo, two of the authors from our course readings and who are also world-renown development economists.  MIT also offers several other open courses that you might be interested in such as sustainable development, food security and development policy.  

Finally, challenge yourself to connect with at least three organizations or key individuals that are working within these subject areas.  Visit their websites, learn about their strategies, identify their sources of funding, and stay updated on their activities via social media or newsletter updates.

History of the Land Grant Mission

In class on Thursday, it became apparent that not everyone is familiar with the fact that Penn State is a Land Grant Institution.

Historical Marker located near Ag Admin Building

In fact, Penn State was one of the first land grant universities in the nation and was the first to award degrees in agriculture.

Land Grants were established by the Morrill Act of 1862 to provide opportunity for the common man to have access to education on agricultural, mechanics and military science. Recently, Land Grant Universities celebrated 150 years.

Other significant pieces of legislation that impacted the missions of these institutions include:

• The Hatch Act of 1887 - Established Ag Experiment Stations
• The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 - Created Cooperative Extension Service.

Today, Land Grants have a mandated tripartite mission of Teaching, Research and extension/outreach.

To learn more about the history of the Land Grant, visit this pdf from the Association of Public Land Grant Universities (APLU): http://www.aplu.org/document.doc?id=780

To learn more about US extension, visit this site of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA): http://www.csrees.usda.gov/qlinks/extension.html

To learn more about extension in Pennsylvania: http://extension.psu.edu/

Here is a 3:00 minute video about the History of Land Grant Universities in Pennsylvania:

Here is a 10:00 minute video from APLU about the Sesquicentennial Anniversary (Great watch): 

Three Cups of Tea and Greg Mortenson

One thing that all students in this class should know is that the course syllabus has been passed out to education and development experts around the world, just to make sure that we're on target.

One thing a few syllabus-reviewers commented on was the Three Cups of Tea reading.  Wasn't the author discredited?  Why do we persist in assigning it in this class?  In fact, the entire Three Cups of Tea book was used as a course text in a previous version of AEE 400. 

I like this chapter because it shows an American going into a village in a developing country, witnessing the poverty, and jumping to the conclusion that a material good - a school building - will solve the problem of education there.  He's also an outsider, meaning that he is not from that country and does not understand the culture or context well.  The rest of the book chronicles the uphill battle he fought to get the school building built, install a teacher and to actually get kids to attend the school.

In short, this reading highlights many aspects of the diffusion of innovation model and provides fodder for discussion. 

The scandal that broke with the foundation that the author, Greg Mortenson does not diminish what we can learn from this chapter.  You can learn more about the scandal by searching for news articles or by watching this 60 Minutes segment.  It's a great example of how accountability with development projects is difficult to document, and how some projects can do more harm than good.

If you're interested in engaging with this reading more, you might consider filling out the worksheet passed out at the end of class using this situation as an example.  Also, the entire book is a great read and I encourage you all to pick it up from either Penn State Library or Schlow Public Library.

Diffusion of Innovations and AEE 400

From the wealth of "Ticket Out" responses, it seems that the Rogers' model of diffusion of innovations captured the interest of many students. 

There are many lingering questions, including:

• How the diffusion model can be used for good and seen as destructive?
• Developing nation and communities wants vs needs? Are we forcing something on the people?
• Does the diffusion of Innovation process/model ever not happen? Example?
• What are some best practices for facilitating diffusion?

These are all GREAT questions!  I'm glad that the reading and brief discussion of this model has your minds turning in all different directions.

As we'll discover throughout this class, the Rogers' model of diffusion is just one model. There are other models of diffusion, which were largely developed because researchers saw so many flaws with the Rogers model.

If you take a look at the model, there are some limitations that you can see right off the bat.  Why should 100% adoption of the innovation be the goal?  Doesn't that assume that the innovation is the right thing for everyone?  These biases are called the pro-innovation bias and the individual-blame bias, which assume that the innovation is "right" and people are "wrong" for not adopting it. 

Decades of research was conducted using this model, trying to pinpoint the best practices to rapidly diffuse new innovations among populations in developing countries.  You can find examples in the readings, as well as by searching for research articles through Penn State libraries.  In the end, many development experts found that each context is unique and that it is very hard to generalize results in across cultures and different geographic locations. 

Doesn't this idea tie right in with the development question?  How do outsiders, mainly Westerners, decide what is right for other people?  If you keep reading in Rogers or look at the literature, many development projects that utilized this model have had unintended consequences and many have tried to diffuse Western innovations in a non-Western context.  In the process, the needs and wants, as well as the indigenous knowledge, of local people are often ignored.

This is a big idea!  There are entire college courses taught JUST on Rogers' model.  In fact, there is an entire graduate class in Workforce Education taught on this topic.  There are folks that have dedicated their academic lives to thinking and researching this model.  So don't be frustrated!

Here are some things you can do: I encourage you to fill out the worksheet passed out at the end of class and reread the assigned reading to make sure you have the basics down.  Come talk to me if you have questions or if you want to learn more about this model.  Also, check out the rest of Rogers' book for more examples and detail about the issues touched on above.  It's an easy read and the examples are great illustrations of his main points.