Increasingly studies claim that building young people's vocational interest in agriculture, as a sector of meaningful employment, is a central dilemma of Africa's education and labour market systems. With Ugandan students' voices, this article examines some of the methodological dilemmas of agricultural education and training. The article draws from evidence generated through a qualitative case study of a public agricultural college. We undertook the study in line with our conceptual argument for mainstreaming young people's voices in the search for solutions to improve agricultural education practice. The study explored and analysed students' experiences and perceptions of the college's vocational pedagogy. Findings that uncover weak agricultural vocational pedagogy at the case study college are analysed and discussed to inform our recommendation for the embedding of craftsmanship virtues in vocational education practice to optimise students' achievement.
Building a shared understanding of the research design 6.3Exploring agri-education practice of case study AET institution 6.3.1Gathering contextual data to deepen understanding 6.3.2State of agri-education practice 6.4Exploring and enacting change options 6.4.1Exploring and shaping change motives 6.4.2Defining desired change 6.5Improvements to vocational placements and guidance enacted 6.5.1Benchmarks of good practice developed 6.5.2The harvest, steps to institutionalise good practice 6.6Reflections on the action research process and outcomes 6.6.1Change supporting conditions 6.6.2 Time scarcity dilemma: the most prevalent difficulty 6.6.3Resources and autonomy to enact change elusive 6.6.4Faithfulness to action research virtues sometimes thwarted 6.6.5Outsider positionality, research team's mediating role
Chapter 7 Conclusions and implications7.1
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