Extension and Community Development Questions and Answers

Answer: D

Literacy is the ability to read and write effectively.

In its basic sense, literacy is the ability to read and write with understanding. India's Census, for example, counts as literate a person aged seven or above who can read and write with understanding in any language. Wider definitions add numeracy and the use of these skills in daily life.

Delivering a presentation is an oral communication skill, participating in trade and commerce is an economic activity, and understanding a given form of communication is too broad, since it includes listening and seeing, which need no literacy.

Answer: B

The last step is satisfaction.

The steps of the teaching-learning process in extension are attention, interest, desire, conviction, action and satisfaction. The learner's attention is first caught, interest and desire are built, conviction follows, the learner acts on the new practice, and the process is complete when the result gives satisfaction, which reinforces the learning and leads to further adoption.

Desire and conviction come in the middle of the sequence, and action is the step just before satisfaction, so none of them is the last.

Answer: B

The foundation stones of extension programmes are facts.

A sound extension programme is planned from a careful analysis of facts about the people and their situation: their farming, resources, income, needs, problems and attitudes. The first principle of programme planning is that the programme is based on an analysis of facts, so facts are its foundation.

Problems are identified from those facts, objectives are then set to address the problems, and solutions are worked out last. Each depends on the facts coming first.

Answer: A

The keyed answer is Design.

Following Ralph Tyler's model, the components of a curriculum are its objectives (what learners should achieve), its content or learning experiences (what is taught), the methods of organising them, and evaluation (how far the objectives have been met).

Design is the way these components are arranged into a plan, such as a subject-centred or learner-centred design. It is a pattern of organisation rather than one of the components, so it is the one the key marks as not a component.

Answer: D

Organization development does not include centralized management.

Organization development (OD) is a planned, organisation-wide effort to improve effectiveness and health through behavioural science. Its typical interventions are change management, team building, survey feedback, process consultation and programmes to improve the quality of work life.

OD values participation, open communication and the involvement of people at all levels in decisions. Centralized management, with authority concentrated at the top, runs against those values, so it is not part of OD.

Answer: A

The major concern of curriculum is to bring a change in the behaviour of individual.

Education aims at desirable changes in learners' behaviour: in their knowledge, understanding, skills, attitudes and values. The curriculum is the means by which these changes are planned and brought about, so its objectives are usually stated as behaviours.

The other options are narrower. Preparation for a job is one possible outcome, learning methods of communication is one area of content, and developing materials of study (printed 'meterials') is a task in carrying out a curriculum, not its central concern.

Answer: A

The intermediate tier is the Panchayat Samiti.

The Panchayati Raj system has three tiers: the Gram Panchayat at the village level, the Panchayat Samiti at the block level in the middle, and the Zila Parishad at the district level. The Panchayat Samiti coordinates the gram panchayats of a block and links them with the district.

The Gram Sabha is the assembly of all voters of a village, not a tier of elected government. 'Autonomous body' and 'statutory body' are general legal descriptions, not names of a Panchayati Raj tier.

Answer: B

Panchayats got constitutional status through the 73 Amendment.

The Constitution (Seventy-third Amendment) Act, 1992, which came into force on 24 April 1993, added Part IX and the Eleventh Schedule to the Constitution. It made the three-tier panchayat system mandatory, with regular elections every five years, reservation for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women, and State Finance and Election Commissions.

The 74th Amendment did the same for urban local bodies, the municipalities. The 72nd and 75th Amendments deal with other matters: tribal seats in Tripura's Assembly and rent tribunals respectively.

Answer: B

The principle is cultural difference.

The principle of cultural difference says that extension work must be adapted to the culture of the people it serves. Farmers and families differ in customs, beliefs and values, so one approach cannot be carried unchanged from one community to another. It is one of the standard principles along with interest and need, participation, learning by doing, adaptability and evaluation.

Honesty is a personal virtue, control runs against extension's voluntary, participatory nature, and teaching is an activity, not a principle.

Answer: A

The term was first used in 1873.

'University extension' was first used in England in 1873, when the University of Cambridge began extending its teaching to people outside the university through lectures in other towns. The idea later reached the United States, where agricultural extension grew up through the land-grant colleges.

1865, 1866 and 1870 are earlier dates close to the right one; none marks the first use of the term.