Bridging the knowledge gap of possessed and required professional competencies of Pakistan's agriculture extension officers
2013
Zafarullah Khan, M., University of Agriculture, Peshawar (Pakistan). Faculty of Rural Social Sciences. Dept. of Agricultural Extension Education and Communication
Professionalism is a matter of attitude and behaviour. It embraces not just knowing how to do your job, but also demonstrating a willingness to learn, cooperate and get well with others, showing respect, and living up to their commitments. To become professional in your task as an extensionist, it is like other life skills, which you learn; you do not just become a ''professional'' overnight. Professionally competent agriculture extension officers play an important role in the development of agriculture in the country. This study was conducted in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Pakistan) and focused on the self-assessment of Agriculture Extension Officers (AEOs) regarding their professionalism. The author mailed a questionnaire to collect the data from all (111) AEOs. The study detected that the use of neat and clean dress and value/like extension work were top rank competencies, while identification of professional agricultural-extension organizations and societies in Pakistan were the lowest competencies. Regarding trainings, the identification of professional organizations and societies were on top, while viewing the extension work as a life-long career and the use of clean dress were on the bottom. Both possessed and required levels of competencies were scaled from one to five on Likert scale. One was very low and five was very high. Among the associated factors, only two factors had statistical significance at 95% confidence level, i.e. professional qualification (0.370) and family background (0.212). A positive relationship was found among those AEOs who were highly qualified and had an agricultural background.
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