Professional development of teachers in conditions digitalization of education

The article discusses the development of digital technologies in education. Digitalization in education is a new paradigm that provides for new opportunities and new forms of communication and interaction of educational subjects; effective means of obtaining quality education. Individualization of vocational education and training based on digital technologies allows for an organic transition to multiprofessionalism - a post-industrial model of professionalism, when the profession ceases to be a standardized set of labor functions and actions, demanded knowledge, skills and abilities - and becomes a dynamic personalized set of competencies. Digitalization is one of the ways to make education of the same quality for everyone. With “digital” it is easier and faster to form a personalized approach to students, it is easier to implement differentiated teaching that takes into account the needs of each student.

Oregon farmers' perspectives on motivations and obstacles to transition to certified organic

This exploratory study investigates perceptions of the transition to certified organic production among farmers in the U.S. state of Oregon who were actively transitioning all or part of their operation to certified organic production. It examines the influence of farmer experience with organic farming systems on motivations and obstacles to transition to certified organic farming. The analysis creates and compares three categories of farmers based on their total years of farming experience and years of farming using organic methods—Experienced Organic Farmers, Beginning Organic Farmers, and Experienced Farmers Beginning Organic—and provides insights into the economic and ideological motivations for transitioning to certified organic, as well as the economic, production, and marketing obstacles inherent to certified organic transition.

Public procurement as strategy to foster organic transition: insights from the Brazilian experience

Initiatives to foster a transition toward organic agriculture have drawn policy-makers' interest worldwide. However, research studies evaluating the effectiveness of policies intended to promote ‘scaling-out’ organic production systems to more farms and larger production areas are still rare. To better understand the role that public procurement and price incentive policies have in scaling-out organic transitions, we assessed the effects of the Brazilian Food Acquisition Program (PAA) in a group of municipalities. PAA offers both markets for family farmers and price incentives for certified organic products. However, our findings suggest that farmers who establish organic production systems and become certified also gain access to other markets; ones that they find more attractive than those created by the PAA. Thus, we find that the PAA offers insufficient incentives for adopting organic practices among peasant and family farmers and supports the argument that scaling-out organic production is a multilevel process that depends on different, but interrelated drivers.

Conclusion

Innovation is an extremely context-specific activity, with both the problems sought to be addressed and the solutions at hand being shaped by the structure and flavour of predominant private activity in the domestic economy, sectoral regulations and State support, and local market needs and purchasing power. In this regard, both public and private entities have been successful in tackling several infrastructure bottlenecks and institutional voids to achieve their goals, promoting innovation along the way. At the same time, several impediments to innovation exist in India, the absence of which could make the pace of innovation-led growth much faster, and its scale, much bigger. Confusing, and often inconsistent, regulatory and policy stances are one such impediment. The absence of a clear strategy to promote research and development in emerging technologies is another. The quicker actualization of progressive policies to beneficial action is a third. An education system that internalises the core values requisite for an innovation culture is a fourth. Unless these are addressed on a war footing, a more organic transition to a creative society with indigenous solutions shall remain a distant dream.