Analyzing the Required Professional Qualification for Agricultural Extension Experts in Operational Level in the Mazandaran Province

Abstract

Extension experts who play an active role at the operational level are required to have some indispensable competencies to enable them to provide the rural community with some high quality, ­applicable and important educational programs. Accordingly, the study sought to analyze the components of professional qualifications for agricultural extension experts’ operational level. This study is a descriptive and survey research. The statistical population (Agricultural Extension Experts in Operational Levels) was comprised of 290 persons. And the proportional stratified sampling using Krejcie-Morgan Table was applied and 165 subjects were selected. The data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire, and its content validity was approved by agricultural extension experts and by using KMO coefficient and Bartlett’s Test giving a reliability of )KMO=0.737(. The data analysis results showed that seven extracted factors of (research factors, technical-professional factors, teaching factors, managerial factors, personality factors, communication factors and virtual technology factors) explain 63.691% of the total variance of the professional competencies for agriculture extension experts’ operational levels in the province. The findings indicate that based on scientific methods of research, assessment of needs, planning and assessment, and in-service training workshops implementation for experts seem to be necessary. Distinctive attention should be practiced by Agriculture Organization to improve agents’ skills in a variety of crops cultivation and in working with software and agricultural applications.

Keywords

• professional competence
• Agricultural Extension
• operational levels experts