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This conceptual and literature reviews study tracks the nexus of rural geo-cultural context, community participation, relevant pedagogy, and educational outcomes. The study traverse and synthesis existing theories/ concepts and methods to rural educational research. To identify the current gaps in knowledge and the methodological prospects in studying rural educational context. This is to lay the basis for a future detailed qualitative study into the cultural and lived educational realities of rural communities in Ghana. To inform innovative strategies on how the state, local communities and schools can better collaborate to enact an excellent Basic Education to bridge the rural-urban educational and socio-economic inequalities in Ghana. This paper argues that the methodological approaches to rural educational research should be focused on the concepts of culture, place and students' lifeworlds. And the methods should be underpinned by qualitative strategies in tune with the Ghanaian oral traditional context. Ethnographic participant observation approaches which socialise researchers, researched schools and their host communities to co-create critical knowledge offer better prospects for rural education research the seek to reconstruct equitable, fair and quality education for all.

This study summarises the findings from a study investigating rural small-holding farmers’ experiences on the shift from food crop to cashew in the forest/savanna transitional agro-ecological zone of Ghana and its impact on rural food security. Using a mix method approach, the study sampled the views of 400 farmers from 9 farming communities in the Wenchi Municipality of Ghana via questionnaire and semi-structured interview and collated statistical data on crop production to trace the nexus between climate change, agrarian land-use decisions and food security. The study found evidence of increasing shift from food crop to cashew production. This was evidenced by increasing cashew cultivation and cashew output and decreasing total land acreage for food crops and increasing food insecurity of farmers. The findings revealed that about 71% of farmers had expanded their cashew farms and another 41.0% have turned their food crops’ lands to cashew production. Besides cashew production, (57.0%) has overtaken the traditional food crop -maize (25.5%) production in terms of output.  Instructively, the study found that the main motivation for the shift from food crop to cashew production is not only to maximise income in bulk, but also climate change adaptability issues. The study found that the cashew crop is resilient in adapting to the changing climate and less prone to pests’ invasion compared to maize in the study District. The study found that food security among rural folks had been seriously compromised by the conversion of farmlands from food crop to cashew farming. Although, the study found that female farmers have higher consciousness to food security yet less motivated to shift from food crop to cashew crop production compared to men.  Worryingly, females are the hardest hit group because of their low ownership of or access to farmlands and low voices of women in farmland use decision making in a men-dominant rural extended family setting of the study District. The study concludes that climate change adaptability concern has introduced a new set of risks including crop failure due to changing rainfall pattern and increasing incidence of pest invasions forcing the rural folks to compromise innovative indigenous farming focus and practices that have helped them to navigate extreme food poverty. This study, therefore, argues for improved food crop seeds tailored to the specific climatic context and innovative farming practices that beef-up small-holding farmers’ capacity to navigate climate change to continually produce food crop to ensure rural food security and sustainability.

This study uses a quantitative correlational design model to investigate the effects of human capital and economic growth on poverty reduction. The study sampled and analyzed 140 countries’ data from United Nations Human Development Index report, 2010 to 2018. Comparing data from Africa, Europe and Asia, the study found that human capital had a positive effect on economic growth, while economic growth had a negative effect on poverty. The study argues that poverty reduction in Africa matters in creating sustainable global futures and recommends investment into free universal pre-tertiary education as a strategy to combat poverty.

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