ARTICLES

 

Reimagining Agricultural Advisors and Educators as Agricultural Bricoleurs Towards Enhanced Skills Transfer: An Adult Learning Perspective

 

 

Teele T.^I; Nkoane M.M.^II

^IPost Graduate Studies in Education, Faculty of Humanities, Central University of Technology, Free State, 20 President Brand St Bloemfontein, ZA 9300
^IIProfessor, Post Graduate Studies in Education, Faculty of Humanities, Central University of Technology, Free State, 20 President Brand St Bloemfontein, ZA 9300

Correspondence

 

 

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ABSTRACT

Bricolage's approach describes how post-colonial, post-positivist, post-modernist, or post-structuralist paradigms have driven intellectuals to develop mixed multi-theoretical and multi-methodological methods. Bricoleurs must contextualise the approaches using the metaphor and articulate its meaning and inferences for advisory services in attempting to do so, as agricultural advisors as bricoleurs and emerging farmers view themselves as co-advisors, guided by bricolage principles. The bricoleurs, equipped with adult education approaches and emerging farmers, will engage in a skills transfer exercise in an agricultural environment. In contrast, a bricoleur plays the role of a facilitator, not a teacher or an expert. Emerging farmers are knowledgeable, and many have years of experience working in the farming environment and have massive knowledge and experience that they can circulate amongst themselves. Bricolage highlights the relationship between agricultural advisors' ways of seeing and the social location of their personal history. The agricultural advisor-as-bricoleur abandons the quest for the naive concept of realism. It focuses instead on clarification of their position in the web of reality, the social locations of other co-advisors and the ways they shape the production and interpretation of knowledge. Bricolage tracks significant ruptures in epistemological, ontological, ethical, and political underpinnings that influence agricultural advisors. The record shows that, while traditional agricultural extension services were based on positivist rationalities, successive generations must adopt more interpretive, post-positivist, post-colonial, post-modern, constructivist, and post-structuralist approaches. As a guiding theory for agricultural extension advisors, Bricolage can improve skills transfer amongst emerging farmers by using limited resources to complete specific tasks.

Keywords: Bricoleur, Agricultural Advisors, Skills Transfer, Adult Education, Constructivism, Agricultural Educators

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1. INTRODUCTION

Bricolage critically examines disciplinary discourses and practices that can give valuable insight into agricultural advisors' cultural, historical, and political positions and works (Pratt et al., 2022). In working with emerging farmers, I believe Bricolage as a guiding theory will allow agricultural advisors to create an environment that enables them to express themselves more openly without fear of being wrong. In so doing, the emerging farmers will enjoy a balanced share of power. The word is derived from the French verb bricoler ("to tinker"), with the English term DIY ("Do-it-yourself") being the closest equivalent of the contemporary French usage (Kincheloe, 2004; Ben-Ashe, 2022). Bricolage mirrors the spirit of "doing with what is available" when resolving difficulties and discovering possibilities and has been used in areas as diverse as education, art, business, and law (Preece, 2014; Phillimore et al., 2019).

Due to its complexity, Bricolage has been used in many other disciplines, including philosophy, critical theory, education, computer software, and business (Ciambotti et al., 2023). When used in multiple disciplines, the accommodative nature of Bricolage can provide agricultural advisors confidence in its relevance as the guiding theory of choice when dealing with training or teaching and learning of emerging farmers. Over the centuries, using Bricolage has been effective in various disciplines as a suitable theoretical basis for emancipatory research (Bansal et al., 2018). The bricolage approach in agricultural sociology is a logical foundation on which the qualitative study takes form and links among the applied constituents and theoretical characteristics of the executed research (Reay et al., 2019). The accommodative nature of Bricolage to apply to various fields gives an agricultural advisor or educator confidence as the appropriate theoretical framework of choice within agricultural sociology studies that deal with agricultural society's social, cultural, political, educational and religious problems (Busch & Barkema, 2021). This term, drawn from Bricolage, permits the agricultural community to have confidence in what they have and make the best of it. Bricolage mirrors the essence of "complete task with what is available" while resolving difficulties and revealing possibilities in the agriculture community. It has been modified to suit various social sciences, humanities and education (Preece, 2014).

Agricultural advisors in the Departments of Agricultures throughout the country are charged with the responsibility of transferring technological skills to emerging farmers (Buso, 2003; Mabaya, Tihanyi, Karaan & Rooyen, 2011; Makhura, Mda, Marais & Jacobs, 2011; Barlow & Van Dijk, 2013; Claassen, Mukwada, Naidoo & Mahasa, 2014). Little effort is made to understand how emerging farmers learn in the agricultural space. Current training and extension approaches subject emerging farmers to conventional or teacher-centred teaching approaches (Mahini, Forushan & Haghani, 2012; Laleye, 2015). These approaches are not in line with the principles of adult education. The emerging farmers are reported to lose interest in these training sessions because they sound inadequate and practical to their farming situations (Riise, Permin, Larsen & Idi, 2002; Anandajayasekeram, Sindu & Kristin, 2007; Lacy, 2011). This calls for reviewing our modes of teaching to align them with technological advancements that subscribe to adult education approaches. The agricultural advisors must follow the adult education, wearing the bricolage lens when executing their duties. Bricolage theories must inform the conduct or methods that guide the approach of the agricultural advisors or extension services.

Agricultural extension approaches such as farmers' field schools, study groups, commodity groups, and others have been used to deal with the issue of technological skills transfer for emerging farmers (Riise et al., 2002; Anandajayasekeram et al., 2007; Vermeulen, Kirsten & Sartorius, 2008; Mabaya et al., 2011). The agricultural advisors have conducted site visits for visual assessments (Mashamba, 2012). Multidisciplinary teams have been conducted to aid the farmers' challenges, consisting of the agricultural advisors and the support staff, such as animal health technicians, soil conservation technicians, and agricultural economists. These agricultural services methods must be reviewed and aligned with adult learning principles. Bricolage has provided a philosophical framework or lens for agricultural advisors and educators to enable an environment in which they can realise their ability to generate, deliver, and circulate information amongst themselves. The agricultural advisors or educators, along with emerging farmers, will display and circulate their knowledge amongst themselves without worrying about any professional methods in their respective fields of practice. Agricural Bricolage (AB) creates an environment where agricultural advisors or educators with emerging farmers can realise their power (Li, Naughton & Nehme, 2015; Mahlomaholo, 2013). This paper aims to borrow from the philosophical framing of Bricolage as a guiding approach for agricultural advisors and educators to improve skills transfer amongst emerging farmers.

 

2. ROLES OF AGRICULTURAL BRICOLAGE THEORY

The AB is the inculcation of agricultural sociology focus within the bricolage theory. Bricolage refers to the production or formation from a varied collection of obtainable equipment or a task formed by such a procedure (Li et al., 2015). Solutions to the accomplishment of AB are cognisant of the features of the available substances and being cognisant of a technique to use, thereby attaining more out of agricultural advisor or educator with emerging farmers while in the construction process of completing a task. AB puts an agricultural advisor or educator in a multi-method style to draw on the power of difference and multi-logicality. In doing so, it is possible to be anxious about matters concerning various cultures and their multiplicities, particularly in systems of multiculturalism that focus on issues of race, social standards, sex and sexual justice vis-à-vis the complex reflection of power (Kincheloe, 2004). Agricultural Bricoleurs (ABs), as agricultural advisors, work to set up post-formal dialogues where alterations are recognised and used to seek correct personal desires and universal discriminations (Sehring, 2009).

Agricultural bricoleurs must participate in the post-formal dialogue, assume critical humility that hints at fairness and express confidence to use what they have "Do it yourself" for effective practice in the agriculture community (Stenholm & Renko, 2016). This kind of temperament permits bricoleurs the chance to instigate the formidable mission of transparency and democracy in dealings between the numerous traditions of the world (Muthivhi & Broom, 2008; Ciambotti et al., 2023). Developing research submits that Bricolage signifies a supplementary realistic depiction of educational procedure as it occurs in repetition, allowing interested parties everywhere in the academic world to obtain an improved grasp of the authenticities of start-up procedures and behaviours (Stenholm & Renko, 2016; Sharp, 2019; Ciambotti et al., 2023). When using agricultural Bricolage within practical presentations, they are openly grounded on concepts of diversity, evolving design, flexibility, and plurality. In addition, it implies methodologies that examine processes from various, and sometimes opposing, theoretical and methodological perceptions (Rogers, 2012; Sharp, 2019). Cakula, Jakobsone and Florea (2015) suggest that "the more perspectives one can bring to one's analysis and critique, the better the grasp of the phenomena one will have and the better one was at developing alternative readings and oppositional practices". From my perspective as an agricultural advisor or educator, I present the favourable case for Bricolage to enhance skills transfer.

 

3. CONTEXTUALISATION OF THE TYPES OF AGRICULTURAL BRICOLAGE

The Agricultural Bricolage defines how post-colonial, post-positivist, post-modernist, or post-structuralist methods will advance agricultural scholars to establish heterogeneous, multi-theoretical and multi-methodological perspectives in knowledge production (Sehring, 2009; Li et al., 2015; Gehman et al., 2018). AB theory contextualises the approach procedure while articulating its implications and interpretations. In attempting to do so as an agricultural bricoleur, executing their functions is guided by bricolage principles. In this context, the bricoleur identifies fellow participants as equals and term them as co-advisors. Using the AB approach, the co-advisor will engage in agricultural activities where an agricultural advisor or educator, known as principal bricoleur, takes the role of a facilitator of discourse, not a teacher or an expert. Agricultural advisors or educators (principal bricoleurs) with emerging farmers (co-advisors along with principal bricoleurs) are treated as knowledgeable, and many of them have several years of working in the farming environment and possess immense knowledge and experience that they can circulate amongst themselves. AB concerns troubling epistemological, ontological, moral, and political reinforcements that sway intellectuals at specific periods (Dascalu et al., 2014; Gehman et al., 2018).

While the old-fashioned qualitative style was grounded in positivist judgements, the literature indicates that consecutive cohorts accepted mostly explanatory, post-positivist, post-colonial, post-modern, constructivist, and post-structuralist perspectives (Taylor & Maor, 2000; Sejzi & Aris, 2012; Bansal et al., 2018). Roger (2012) indicated that bricoleurs have five approaches that venerate this meticulous complexity: the narrative bricoleur, the political bricoleur, the theoretical bricoleur, the methodological bricoleur, and the interpretive bricoleur. An interpretive bricolage perspective, as mentioned by Denzin and Lincoln (2000), defines upholding the conviction that "there is no one correct telling [of an] ... event. Each telling, "like light hitting a crystal", reflects a different perspective on [an]... incident". An interpretive bricoleur is, therefore, a scholar who "understands that inquiry is an interactive process, shaped by his or her personal history, biography, gender, social class, race and ethnicity and by those of the people in the setting" (Leow & Neo, 2015).

Interpretive bricoleurs, assuming post-positivist epistemologies, acknowledge that understanding is never permitted from a personal standpoint or political explanations (Ultanir, 2012; Sharp, 2019). Agricultural bricoleurs (agricultural advisors) will be guided by this format, cognisant that each co-advisor has its own experiences. Their experiences will define their attitudes and how they interpret or define concepts. The known issue of the dominance of specific individuals over others is highlighted in the saying that "there is no one correct telling of an event". Theoretical bricoleurs toil over and among various theoretical models: "The theoretical bricoleur reads widely and is knowledgeable about the many interpretive paradigms (e.g., feminism, Marxism, cultural studies, constructivism, queer theory) that can be brought to any particular problem" (Lundell & Higbee, 2001; Kitchel & Ball, 2014). Political bricoleurs are scholars cognisant of the way knowing and power are conjoined. These scholars clarify that the political bricoleur is cognisant that science is power, for all inquiry findings have political implications (Sharp, 2019). No value-free science exists (Bansal et al., 2018; Sharp, 2019). Political bricoleurs accepting such knowledge, similar to educators familiar with critical pedagogies, create counter-hegemonic types of inquiry which trouble oppressive social concepts and inequalities.

Political bricoleurs create understanding for the advantage of marginalised persons through daily, not-considered activities of neoliberal, industrialist, white, masculine, and heterosexist social constructions (Owusu & Janssen, 2013; Sharp, 2019). The concept of the political bricoleur swayed Kincheloe's pronouncement of the critical bricoleur; thus, Kincheloe's essential ventures of Bricolage into the idea of bricoleurs. Narrative bricoleurs consider that an inquiry is a description (i.e., a narrative), the reason being that focused existence cannot be "captured"; literature will embody detailed explanations of an occurrence (Vanevenhoven et al., 2011). As such, texts are permanently placed directly from specific contextual perspectives. Narrative bricoleurs consider how ideas and talk shape how to make meaning (Sharp, 2019). Besides ignoring ideas, texts and talk, narrative bricoleurs attempt to appreciate their effect on the inquiry processes and their writings (Bansal et al., 2018). Narrative bricoleurs consequently try to disturb and deter others from univocal inquiry depictions. They ensure that narrative bricoleurs define their methods from numerous approaches, such as spoken words and sources (Sharp, 2019).

 

4. EPISTEMOLOGY OF BRICOLAGE

Scholars of Bricolage (Kincheloe, 2004; Mahlomaholo, 2013) mention the two kinds of bricoleurs: ones that are dedicated to investigative eclecticism, providing current situations to structure the approaches used and the ones who seek to participate in the genealogy/archaeology of the arenas with some outstanding proposals in mind. Agricultural bricoleurs, as agricultural advisors, lean towards the notion that theory is not an explanation of the world but a justification for relating to the world (Thompson-Hardy, 2018). As epistemology evolved, it was understood that knowledge comes from relationships between objects and subjects and how they interact in the world (Phillimore et al., 2019). Bricolage includes the epistemological approach that allows different people to construct different meanings in various ways (Ciambotti et al., 2023). The features of Bricolage include deflection, play, means of a non-professional, limited means, and unlimited tasks (Stenholm & Renko, 2016). Epistemology helps to answer questions about what makes true knowledge different from false knowledge or knowledge based on inadequate information (Thompson-Hardy, 2018). The epistemological underpinning of Bricolage emanates from an old-fashioned French manifestation that symbolises crafts-persons who artistically use ingredients remaining from extra tasks to build new artefacts (Ultanir, 2012; Ciambotti et al., 2023).

In light of Bricolage, there is a key difference between constructivism and constructionism. Constructivism must be used only for epistemological considerations that seek to find meaning from an individual perspective, and it is used in creating and transmitting knowledge (Pratt et al., 2022). Constructivism focuses on each individual's way of making sense of the world as valid, standing in the way of a critical stance (Ben-Asher, 2022). In contrast, social constructionism considers the culture surrounding the individual and how that culture shapes how the individual views the world. In light of this perspective, constructivism resists a critical approach while constructionism fosters it (Thompson-Hardy, 2018). Bricolage signals the relations between an investigator's viewing methods and the societal locality. The inquirer-as-agricultural bricoleur (agricultural advisor) deserts the search for certain ingenuous perceptions of pragmatism, the societal positions of other investigators and the methods with which they structure the explanation and creation of the meaning of knowledge, concentrating their place on the articulation of their location in the matrix of actuality. AB admires the complexity of the existing world. Indeed, it is based on an epistemology of complexity (Tshabalala Ndeya-Ndereya & Merwe, 2014; Ciambotti et al., 2023).

 

5. THE RHETORIC AND ROLES OF THE AGRICULTURAL BRICOLEUR (AGRICULTURAL ADVISOR)

Qualitative inquiry is embedded in a phenomenological model, which enshrines that actuality is a social construct amongst individuals or mutual definitions of the circumstances (Busch & Barkema, 2021). The theory underpinning AB focuses on the principles of social constructivism (Nyika & Murray-Orr, 2017; Cole, 2022). AB assigns the ways of constructivists that separate it from the naive realism of the positivists, the critical realism of the post-positivists, and the historical realism of the critical theorists in favour of relativism based on multiple psychological constructions conveyed by collectives and individuals (Mahlomaholo, 2013; Balina, Baumgarte & Salna, 2015). Rhetoric is the art of spoken or written words, which are essential and effective. It generally refers to how language is employed, but it means the insincere or even deceptive use of words (Hota et al., 2019; Cole, 2022). Within AB, the intellectual refers to fellow inquiry 'participants' as co-advisors, not objects (Owusu & Janssen, 2013). Agricultural bricoleur considers that agricultural advisors or educators with emerging farmers as co-advisors are human beings with emotions and feelings and have massive knowledge to contribute.

Agricultural bricoleurs become "immersed" in the phenomenon of interest, reflecting a neutral view and cognisant of their own bias and attempting to be fair in representing the views of others in the agricultural environment (Rogers, 2012; Stenholm & Renko, 2016). The role of an agricultural bricoleur is to create a learning and teaching environment in which emerging farmers as fellow co-advisors or co-educators (co-advisors) will realise their power to sort out solutions to their challenges. Agricultural bricoleur believes that emerging farmers (co-advisors) are humans with past experiences and feelings relating to the study and should be treated as partners rather than objects (Stenholm & Renko, 2016). The agricultural bricoleur with emerging farmers (co-advisors) work together to construct their reality rather than a purely objective perception of lived experience, and no such construction can claim absolute facts (Cardno et al., 2017). Agricultural bricoleur recognises that what people perceive and believe is shaped by their assumptions, prior experiences, and the reality with which they engage (Pratt et al., 2022). From this perspective, every theory, model, or conclusion is necessarily a simplified and incomplete attempt to grasp something about a complex reality (Ciambotti et al., 2023).

The epistemological stance and the methodological and theoretical approaches applicable to the social and agricultural environment are not grounded in experimental or quasi-experimental design and are not selected randomly (Busch & Barkema, 2021). Instead, agricultural bricoleurs and co-advisors present themselves based on their relevance to the agricultural environment. For example, McTaggart indicates that Moreno had used collective engagement and the idea of similar to co-advisors as early as 1913 in community development initiatives while working with sex workers in the Vienna suburb of Spittelberg (McTaggart, 2016). The idea is to build and deepen the involvement and voice of those affected by what is being engaged and, over time, to develop more radically engaged and well-founded understandings (Crane, 2011). The post-formalism of Kincheloe (2001), who has operated to advance new systems of gathering intelligence and describing intellect, is a very productive concept for collaborative guidelines amongst co-advisors, together with doing work for social justice and democratic re-allocations of power. In addition, helping by understanding race, social standards, sex, and sexual dimensions of all intellectual deeds is an advantage (Kincheloe, 2004). Post-formalism is associated with interrogations of knowledge liberation via ideological dis-embedding and a key focus on the course of self-production escalations above the formalist rationale (Mahlomaholo, 2013). Its commitment to formalising techniques constantly proposes more queries for resolution by concentrating on the demands of human self-respect, independence, power, and social duty (Ana, 2015; Avni, 2015).

 

6. THE TEACHING PARADIGM FOR SKILLS TRANSFER FOR THE EMERGING FARMERS (CO-ADVISORS)

Several methods can be explored to facilitate agricultural courses. With the emergence of the new world order, agricultural advisors and educators' exposure to meaningful subject matter phased in agriculture yields content mastery (Omoto & Nyongesa, 2013). Conventional or teacher-centred learning is a non-participatory approach where students are rarely expected to ask questions or challenge academic theories (Mahini et al., 2012). This approach considers students as passive receptors of information without considering the need to actively participate in the learning process (Attard, De Loio Geven & Santa, 2010). Teacher-centred learning is a teaching method whereby the teacher is primarily the giver of knowledge and wisdom to the learners (Msila & Setlhako, 2012). Observing this approach, the agricultural advisor or educator operates as the centre of knowledge and directs the knowledge process by controlling the students' access to information (Msonde, 2011).

The practicality of this approach has proven to fail with emerging farmers as adult students. Adult students prefer to learn autonomously and are in charge of their learning. They are known to dislike being treated as children without knowledge or skills. The emerging farmers have been subjected to this learning method since the democratic dispensation, and it has not yielded satisfactory agricultural knowledge utilisation amongst themselves. The approaches used by agricultural advisors have to align with the prerequisites of the adult learning principles. The adult learning principles consider the emerging farmers' lifelong skills and prior knowledge. It allows them to express themselves and circulate their knowledge amongst themselves as they learn. Therefore, it has become a powerful learning and teaching tool that agricultural advisors and educators use for emerging farmers to use their lifelong skills to address their challenges.

Learner-centred learning does not have one universally agreed definition despite being a term often used by several higher education policy-makers (Taylor & Mulhall, 2001; Tshabalala et al., 2014). This method will allow emerging farmers to shape their learning paths and place their responsibility to make their educational process meaningful (Hirumi, 2002; Mahini et al., 2012). The term suggests an educational method that puts emerging farmers as learners at the centre, focusing on agricultural advisors or educators to the emerging farmers or learners (Attard et al., 2010). Learner-centred or farmer-centred learning suggests reflecting a learning approach based on the philosophy that the student, "otherwise referred to below as the learner or farmer," is at the heart of the learning process. Van Eekelen et al. (2006), cited by Attard et al., state that learner-centred learning allows emerging farmers to shape their learning paths and places their responsibility to actively make their educational process a meaningful one. The farmer-centred learning approach can create an environment where emerging farmers will share their experiences with each other, circulating their lifelong skills and experiences amongst themselves to use them to solve their problems.

The skills transfer in the agricultural context can be defined as a flow of skills between skills holders or knowledge 'generators' such as inquiry laboratories and universities and skills users such as emerging farmers (Chingware, 2014). The skills signify knowledge of agricultural enterprises' type and physical potential and include the physical and biological factors that can be modified through technology development. Therefore, technological skills refer to the flow of skills that include educational training and teaching-learning through information passage from the trainer to the trainee (Laleye, 2015). The application of skills depends on how farmers perceive technology; perception is how an individual receives information or stimuli from the environment and transforms it into psychological awareness (Vygotsky, 1996). Farmers assess expected outcomes, and their choice of action (decision) will depend on farmers' evaluation of the individual skill and other outcomes in terms of their perspectives (Tshabalala, Ndeya-Ndereya, & Merwe, 2014; Babintsev, Sapryka & Serkina, 2015).

Emerging farmers need skills that will ensure they have low input but high benefits and high economic productivity (Cankaya, Kutlu, & Cebeci, 2015). The real value of transformation depends on the knowledge base, ideas, and insights that reside in the heads or are accessible to emerging farmers when needed (Roberts & Roberts, 2006; Hunt, Birch, Vanclay & Coutts, 2014). Adults' educational learning and teaching need to be problem-focused and goal-orientated to achieve favourable improvements (Idowu, 2005; Christidou, Hatzinikita & Gravani, 2012; Jakobsone & Cakula, 2015). These skills will play a crucial role in the quality and quantity of agricultural production and, most importantly, food security (Claassen et al., 2014; Blignaut, 2015). Lack of post-settlement educational support to beneficiaries of land reform (Claassen et al. 2014) and low engagement levels of South African agribusiness and retailers with emerging farmers (Karaan & Kirsten, 2008) amount to failure in agricultural production. Technical assistance for quality and standards for the small-scale developing sector without access to the necessary resources, as Mashroofa and Senevirathne (2014) highlighted, could lead to failure. This solidifies the need for agricultural extension services to rethink how they disseminate information and conduct daily teaching and learning sessions for emerging farmers. To align the approach used with the adult learning principles.

 

7. ADULT EDUCATION FOR EMERGING FARMERS

Adult education is defined by Laleye (2015) as a process of teaching and learning that subscribe to autonomous principles that are goal and problem-orientated, bring knowledge and experience, and apply what they learned amongst others (Smarrella, 2015). Adult education uses learning and teaching techniques to display their expertise while learning from fellow emerging farmers (Havlin, Beaton, Tisdale & Nelson, 1999; Crookes, Crookes & Walsh, 2013). Adult education perspectives allow emerging farmers to invest in adult learning to achieve economic efficiency and address equity deficiencies (Eady, Herrington & Jones, 2010; Hava & Erturgut, 2010). This trend is driven by advances in information and communication technologies and reduced trade barriers (Lacy, 2011; Bernard, Msungu, & Sanare, 2013; Cankaya et al., 2015). The role of adult learning in productivity, innovation, and employment chances of individuals has only recently come to the fore (Rubenson, 2007).

Farmer-centred learning is a teaching approach that inspires emerging farmers to become active in the learning process; such an approach will show value in their problem-solving skills and critical thinking. The ethos behind this approach to learning changed during the second half of the twentieth century when theories of constructivism and constructionism gained popularity (Hannafin & Hannafin, 2010; Li, 2015; Awases, 2015). Changes to the pedagogical methods and educational processes should be more flexible for students and encourage them to participate as much as possible. Adult education is a proven, trialled and tested approach that guides the adult learning process and fosters emerging farmers' participation. This approach denotes that emerging farmers come to a learning centre or classroom with a wealth of knowledge that can be circulated, and each learns from it. This is because emerging farmers work daily in their working environment and are well-grounded in their farming expertise to use lifelong skills to solve their problems.

 

8. CONCLUSION

The concept of Agricultural Bricolage is suggested as the most suitable since it is a flexible method appropriate to studying a structural kind, the study of social, cultural, political and religious importance operating within agricultural society. AB has toured cognitive science, technological information, innovation, and organisation theory (Owusu & Janssen, 2013). It embraces a sympathetic inquiry setting composed of field-based and interpretative contexts as a procedure and for working in a multidisciplinary situation (Kincheloe, 2001). AB conceptualises a far more robust process for structuring evidence, generating information, and telling the stories that embody it (Kincheloe, 2004). Bricolage would manifest as inefficient, trial-and-error actions based on a superficial model (Ben-Ari, 1998; Le Loarne, 2005). The bricolage approach can provide a philosophical lens for agricultural advisors to enable a sustainable learning environment for emerging farmers. Where the emerging farmers will display and circulate their knowledge amongst themselves without worrying about any professional methods used by professionals in their respective fields of practice, therefore creating an environment where they will realise their power (Wright, Knight & Pomerleau, 1999; Mahlomaholo, 2013; Li, Naughton & Nehme, 2015). In forming the Bricolage, different theoretical traditions are engaged in a wider critical theoretical/critical pedagogical context to form a baseline for a transformative model of a multi-methodological approach. Bricolage is recycled to symbolise concrete instead of an intellectual learning style (Ben-Ari, 1998). The mode of teaching, learning, and disseminating information to emerging farmers has to be goal-focused and problem-orientated, which requires a multi-methodological approach. The bricolage approach allows various available pieces to solve existing problems simply by using the knowledge freely available in the context of emerging farmers. I think emerging farmers will learn best in a fun and open learning environment with a shared balance of power between the agricultural advisors and emerging farmers and everyone engaging as equals. The adult education approach by agricultural advisors and educators taking a posture of the bricoleur as a guiding theory will empower agricultural advisors and educators to create a sustainable learning environment for emerging farmers, making them realise their power.

 

9. CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest in this manuscript.

 

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Correspondence:
T. Teele
Correspondence Email: tspoteele@gmail.com