agroforestry teaching, research, and extension programs will only be successful
if an integrative and comprehensive approach is adopted and maintained.
Care must be exercised as science has evolved to be best able to deal
with minutiae while finding complex, multidisciplinary problem-solving
ventures difficult, if not impossible, to successfully address. In a sense, the
development of an infrastructure to support the field of agroforestry will
require reversing the inherent tendencies for science to continually compartmentalize
and specialize.
A second potential constraint is that educators, being usually tied to
research institutions, also tend to be reductionists. University-based instruction
and public education are separated based on audience characteristics
and the subject matter felt to be important to their needs. Within the
university, subjects are partitioned based on 'time in residence'. Outside the
university structure, public education becomes stratified by the perceived
technical capabilities and/or intellectual sophistication of the audience. It
needs to be recognized, however, that successful educational programs must
target particular needs of specific audiences and that personal learning
actually exists as an 'educational continuum' rather than as discrete events.
This means that education is a continuous process involving a changing set
of educational needs as one moves from child to young adult to professional.
Therefore, youth education, resident instruction, and professional training
are all interrelated, and in applied fields such as agroforestry, both practical
skills as well as understanding and knowledge are important. This balance,
obviously, shifts between audiences but combines to form the criteria for
establishing a teaching and research program in agroforestry. In that it is
more difficult to teach basic principles than basic practice (e.g., consider the
ease that most learn fire control compared to thermodynamics),
agroforestry educational programs have concentrated on the skills necessary
for its practice. As a result, a comprehensive research foundation is not yet
available to support many agroforestry practices.
A final constraint is that no single education or training model exists for
agroforestry. Approaches to education and training in agroforestry must be
country-specific depending on ecological, socioeconomic, and cultural
needs; the characteristics and extent of human, physical, and financial
resources available; and the inherent biophysical limitations to primary
productivity. Therefore, local assessments of needs and capabilities must be
carried out and educational and training programs tailored to such circumstances
before widespread adoption of agroforestry practices will become a
reality.
These were the challenges facing the working groups at the International
Workshop on Professional Education and Training in Agroforestry. Par