Food insecurity is a global concern and is acute in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa as well as pockets in the global North. In the lush green spaces of "God's Own Country", the state of Kerala in India, about 379,000 women are engaged in farming in about 75,800 groups. Spearheaded by Kudumbashree, the State Poverty Eradication Mission…

Women's education has been promoted as both a key objective of the global campaign for gender equality and as a "sine qua non" of long-term sustainable development. In the extant literature, non-formal education has been advanced as a tool for social change and women's empowerment. Moreover, recent reports published by international…

This qualitative study explored lived experiences of eight youth-camp alumni who were enrolled in colleges. This study was grounded in four paradigms: knowledge application, positive youth development (PYD), personal skills, and social integration. The key findings of this study were transfer of learning between skills learned in youth programs…

Extension provides non-formal education and learning activities to people throughout the country. The largest non-formal adult education organization in the world, Cooperative Extension takes knowledge gained through research and education directly to the community to create positive changes. Through the use of paraprofessionals, Extension is able…

The existing body of scholarly knowledge has little research focused specifically on formal, non-formal, and informal education and training's contribution to the development of expert capabilities. The purpose of this research was to find out how experts in their field of study or work perceived education and training learning contexts…

This study sought to understand how women entrepreneurs learn to become entrepreneurs in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The KSA's context has a significant impact on the manifestation of entrepreneurial learning (EL) processes and the development of entrepreneurial identity. However, no previous studies on women's entrepreneurial learning and…

Guided tours, field trips, and other non-formal learning experiences occur in a variety of settings such as museums, parks, civic buildings, and architectural landmarks for the purpose of educating the public. This study yielded four main findings. (1) Program educational goals were visitor awareness, positive affective experience, and advocacy.…

This qualitative case study focused on career commitment in two types of professional adult educators, extension agents and missionaries. Past research studying extension agents and missionaries had documented decades of early career attrition. Research documented the issues, explored causes, and proposed solutions. Yet, the problem persists. Much…

The purpose of this study was to explore women district leader's perceptions of organizational change in a rural women's education and empowerment program in India, using an appreciative inquiry framework. This is a qualitative case study of the Mahila Samakhya (MS) program, which was initiated to provide non-formal education and empower rural…

"Education and conflict" has emerged as a new field of study during the last two decades. However, higher education is still relatively absent from this debate as most of the research has focused on primary and non-formal education. This dissertation is an exploratory qualitative study on the potential role of higher education in…

This dissertation examines localization of Open Educational Resources (OER) in Himalayan community technology centers of Nepal. Specifically, I examine strategies and practices that local knowledge-workers utilize in order to localize educational content for the disparate needs, interests, and ability-levels of learners in rural villages. This…

The Cooperative Extension service was established in 1914 with the passage of the Smith-Lever Act. The role of Cooperative Extension to give non-formal, research-based education to the people. Cooperative Extension has been a partnership between the federal, state, and county government and the state land- grant universities. 4-H has been the…

The purpose of this research is to consider the environmental knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, of adults in Minnesota, and possible factors that influence environmental literacy. Specifically, this study is designed to: (1) measure the environmental literacy of Minnesota adults, (2) explore possible relationships between Minnesota adults.…

Ample evidence suggests that environmental problems, and their impacts to present and future generations, require our utmost attention. Education within schools "and" communities play critical roles in shaping the perceptions and relationships people have to their natural and social environments. However, few studies have examined the…

The reason behind this study was that there was the necessity for a description of the influences of the cultural practices that influence parents' decisions and how the decisions that parents of children with special needs make in their nonparticipation in formal education in the Ikorodu community of Lagos state, Nigeria. Children with special…