The Art Fund in International Studies - Essay Example

The Art Fund in International Studies Introduction. International relations also known as international studies involve the study of different relationships between regions and countries. The study includes the state, international nongovernmental organizations, inter-governmental organizations, and the multinational corporation roles. International relation is known to be both a public and an academic field policy that could be normative or positive. The field seeks to highlight, as well as establish the foreign policy of a certain state. Even though some practitioners categorize international relations as a section of political science, educationists treat it as one of the interdisciplinary areas of study. In this respect, international relations has a huge role to play in the education of a country. Prior studies in this field, have recorded the impacts of international relations on the technology, international law, economics, history, philosophy, social work, geography, criminology, anthropology, gender studies, psychology and cultural studies. These studies recorded a number of issues that resulted from international relations. These include globalization, international security, state sovereignty, ecological sustainability, nationalism, global finance, economic development, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, human security, organized crime, human rights, and foreign intervention. Despite the many merits of international relations, there is apparently no documented study on the impact of international relations on agricultural education. This has created a gap in the previous studies. In attempts to cover the gap in prior studies, this paper proposes a research to investigate the impacts of international relations on agricultural education. Aims and Objectives of the study. The prime aim of this study is to find out the effects of international relation on agricultural education. By the end of this study, the researcher would be able to establish the effects of international relations in respect to agricultural education. The researcher will find out the merits and demerits of international relations on agricultural education. Research context, relevance and novelty. Successful completion of this research work will come with a lot of significance to a lot of people, especially the politicians, those affected by culture, as well as the educators. First, data, results and conclusions from this research shall serve as updated literature on the impacts of international relation within the population size targeted for this research work. To a large extent, this research shall help in coming out with new models on the type or kind of challenges of agricultural education as a result of international relations. The new trend of knowledge to be acquired shall indeed lead to a new paradigm shift whereby the knowledge shall be adapted for use and implementation by agricultural educationalists. This is to say that the findings and conclusions from this research work will go a long way to shape the lifestyle, working habit and social structures of teachers, the cultures of a county alongside the learners. This means that the learners and all other people across the agricultural education divide who come across this document will have a renewed commitment towards international relations. In particular, agricultural students will reap a lot of benefits from this research given that it seeks to inform them about how their carriers are shaped by international relation. The agricultural teachers, on the other hand, would not fail to reap these benefits. This study is inclusive in its objective and would, therefore, explore ways on how developing and encouraging international relations would influence the economy of a country and thus the agricultural education. Research questions. This study will address a number of research questions. These include: What are the merits of international relations? What are the demerits of international relations? How does international relations affect a country’s agricultural education? Hypotheses. In this study we hypothesis that international relations positively impacts on agricultural education. Theoretical Framework International relation is known to have originated many years ago. For instance, the ancient Sumerian interaction is known to have started in 3500 BC as an initial full fledged international system (Bodycott 20). In respect to sovereign states are normally identified by the Westphalia peace in the year 1648. This was seen as a stepping-stone towards the development of the state’s modern system. Before this, the medieval European organization of political authority relied on a vaguely hierarchical religious order. Different from the popular belief, it was seen that Westphalia embraced the sovereignty systems like the Holy Roman Empire (Bruce 71). Other than the Westphalia’s piece, the Utrecht Treaty of 1713 is believed to be a reflection of norms that are emerging, in which the sovereigns had no equal internals within the territory. There were also no external superiors like the ultimate authority inside the sovereign borders of the territory. In the years between 1500 and 1790, there was a surging number of sovereign states that were independent, armies and the institutionalization. The revolution of France was an addition to this new idea that the citizen of a state will define a nation and a sovereign. A state with a sovereign nation was considered being a nation state (Bruce 32). At first, international relation, as an independent study field was fully British-centred. In 1918, international relations came out as an academic discipline that is formal. The first chair in international relations was founded in the same year. This was referred to as the Woodrow Wilson chair in the Aberystwyth, which was endowed by David Davis as an initial position that was concerned with international relations (Bodycott 44). After this, international relations was established in other universities in the united states, Switzerland, and Geneva. The theories of international relations can be categorized into post-positive and positivist theories. The positivist theory had an objective of replicating the natural science methods through the analysis of the effects of material forces (Alfaro 21). The prime focus of these theories is on the international relation features like military force size, interactions of state, and power balance among others. On the other hand, the post-positivism theories denies the idea that the social world could be studied within an object. It rules out the neo-realism central ideas like the theory of rational choice, on the basis that a scientific method may not be applied to the social world, hence an international relation science is impossible. Examples of positivist theories include realism, neoliberalism, liberalism, and the Regime theory. Examples of the post-positivist theories include international society theory, social constructivism, Marxism, and critical theory (Alfaro 23). Besides these, there are also the leadership theories of international relations. This includes the interest group perspective, and the strategic perspective theories. From these theories, it is evidenced that there is no literature on the relevance of international relation on agriculture education. This, therefore, calls for more research to be done to ascertain how agricultural education is affected by international relations. Methodology. Research Design. This study would involve an ethnographic design. An ethnographic design is normally a qualitative method of research that is aimed towards understanding and learning certain phenomenon, which may reflect in one way, or another to the systems and knowledge that guides the life of a certain group. This design would be employed in gathering data that are empirical on cultures and societies of humans. Data collection in ethnographic design can take a form of a questionnaire, an interview or observation. In this study, the collection of data will be done using a questionnaire. The questions used in this study will be presented in the booklet and the booklet should have a number of questions and concerns that require responses from the subjects. The subjects, on the other hand, will be divided into three groups. Participants will be allocated into the three groups first by ensuring that they are agricultural students who study international relations. Next, the participants of this study will be divided into groups depending on the period that the students have pursued their agricultural education. The first group would be named as 1 to 10 years group, the second would be 11 to 20 years group, and the third would be 21 and above years. The dependent variable for this study would be impacts of international relations on agricultural education, whereas, the independent variable would be the period that the subjects stayed abroad. The controlled variable for this study will be the participants’ ages. This is because the age of the participants will not have any effect on agricultural education. Population sample. The opportunity sample for this study will be made up of fifteen participants. Some participants will be obtained from the students studying abroad. Other participants could be the friends of the researcher. The participants will be selected using the fact that they need to be agricultural students who study international relations. The participants of this research should be volunteers. Three groups consisting of five participants should be selected for the research. The three groups will be given names according to the duration of studying abroad. Data Collection. In this study, data collection will involve the use of two major approaches. These are secondary and primary data collection methods. Each of these is discussed as follows. The researcher will use secondary data by collecting data from previous and existing research works. In this context, secondary data refers to data that are not from the researcher’s personal sources. This means that the researcher cannot boast of being the original collector or owner of secondary data. As is often the case, secondary data are not first-hand data but once the approach towards their collection is well conducted, the researcher can be assured of authentic data. To ensure that there is authenticity, the researcher will develop a data log. The data log will involve the statement of all themes or topics that the researcher would collect data on. The researcher will then make a list of sources including books, internet sources, academic journals, and articles. About ten sources on international relation would be selected at the first stage. The researcher shall then conduct detailed checks into the professional background of the various authors of the sources. Through this, two ‘best’ sources would be selected for the research. The researcher will then collect the sources and sample from them specific materials that are useful towards the answering of the research questions proposed. The researcher will make use of qualitative reviews on the materials selected from the sources. This means that the researcher will not only gather information from the sources but also discuss the quotations by comparing ideas from different sources and drawing personal conclusions. Primary data, on the other hand, will constitute data collected personally by the researcher. These data is referred to as first hand, since the information given are normally not reported through any medium. In this study, primary data will be collected through the use of a questionnaire. All subjects will be given oral and written explanation on international relations and agricultural education. The subjects will then be given response booklets. The researcher will ask questions concerning the impacts of international relations on agricultural education and the participants would write their responses in the given response booklet. In this respect, the researcher shall adapt the survey monkey process, with a view to seek to interrogate the respondents through an online system. This way, the respondents shall be given a total of twenty (20) days to answer the questions, which would be enough for the respondents to ensure all pertinent questions are responded to accordingly. Before answering the questions, the researcher will communicate with respondents via email to ensure that all questions are discussed to clear doubts with any question. The interpretations of the questionnaire shall also be made known to the respondents. Respondents shall not be required to write their names on the questionnaires, but be required to produce unique codes synonymous on each of the given questionnaires. The code will be necessary for comparative studies. After the twenty (20) day deadline, the instruments shall be collected and duly presented and analyzed. Expected results. The impacts on international relations of each group of participants will be measured using the Harvard Group Scale. Measuring of the international relation will be done using a scoring range of 0 to 12. Different scores of the impacts of international relations on agricultural education of each specific group will be obtained. The mean and the standard deviation of the scores should be calculated. The results of the research will be gathered, compiled and recorded in the table shown below (Table 2). Table1: Table showing the results of the international relations. Group 1 ( 1 to 10 years) Group two (11 to 20 years) Group three (21 and above years) Members Number of men and women Number of men and women Number of men and women Age range Mean age Standard Deviation Total international field experience Success scores Data analysis. The data collected will be analyzed by use SPSS or excel solver program. Independent group design, two tailed theory, one way ANOVA test will be used to test the significant difference between groups. The mean, standard deviation, standard error, lower bound, minimum, maximum, and the component variance for all the scores of the entries of each group will be calculated and recorded in the table 2. The mean of the scores will also be calculated using SPSS or excel solver program. All the values obtained after calculation will be recorded in a table. A test of the homogeneity for different variances will also be obtained and recorded in a table. The response of international field experience for each group will be obtained and tabulated. A test for equality of the obtained means will equally be obtained and recorded in a table. A multiple comparison of the mean and the data collected will also be done, and results tabulated. After this, the homogeneous subsets of each group will be determined and the results tabulated in a table. After all these, a graph of the mean of the scores of impacts of international relations on agricultural education, against the group of participants, will be plotted in e-views or excel. In this case, the dependent variable for the research will be the international relations response whereas the independent variable of the research will be the different group of participants. Discussion. International relation is a vital and beneficial phase in education and a student’s preparation for a career that is professionally oriented. From the results, it is expected that international relations would have increased positive effects on agricultural education. This is so because improved international relations could contribute towards a continuous flow of competent and qualified personnel into resource and agricultural management industries. Prior studies conducted in this field have reported that international relations leads to increased international experience and incorporation of global dimension into learning. Other studies conducted to investigate the relevance of international student’s placements established that international relations increased their extent of learning, and global community perspectives. In this case, the obtained results would be compared with the recorded theories thus establishing the required solution to the proposed problem. After this, the hypothesis would be approved or disapproved. A conclusion of the study would be made. Research ethics to be applied. Researchers are made to go through an array of ethical requirements. There is the need to meet professional, institutional, as well as standards for conducting any research related to human participants. In helping steer clear any ethical quandaries, this research would consider a number of research ethics. First, the researcher would frankly discuss with the participants the intellectual property. More often than not, academic competitive leads to trouble depending on who should be credited for authorship. The best way the researcher would consider in order to avoiding disagreements about who to be credited, and using which order, the researcher would talk about the issues at the start of the working relationship with the subjects and ensure they are put in writing. This will act as a tool to help discus and evaluate the contributions during the research process. Secondly, the researchers would be conscious of multiple roles of the participants. This could be achieved by avoiding relationships that might tend to impair the researchers’ professional performances or could cause harm to others. However, they will have to take note that many multiple relationships are not ethical especially if they are not to have adverse effects. When recruiting the participants in this study, the researchers would have to think carefully before joining the multiple relationships with the subjects. In this case, the researcher would act as lab supervisor, as well as a mentor and make sure he or she does not abuse the power to differentiate him or herself with students. The researcher would make sure he/she outlines clearly the nature and structure of mentoring before mentoring begins. The third code of ethics to be upheld during the study would be to make sure the informed-consent rules are strictly followed. Doing this properly, the consent process would ensure that the participants voluntarily participate in the research when fully informed of the relevant benefits and risks. Lastly, the researcher would have to consider respecting the confidentiality and privacy of the participants. Respecting individual rights to confidentiality, as well as privacy is a key tenet for every researcher. The researcher will, therefore, have to discus confidentiality limits giving the participants information concerning how their data will be put into use and also know the law of the state, as well as taking practical security measures. Work Cited Alfaro, C. International teacher’s profession development. Teaching Education, (2010). 21(1), 47-59. Armstrong, F. Teacher’s agricultural education globally: Facilitation of global literacy. J of Teacher Education, (2008). 21(4), 490-506. Bodycott, P. The value of short-term education in overseas. J of Teaching Education, (2000). 24(9), 27-33. Bruce, M. Developing a global educational perspective. J of Teacher Education. (2001). 42(1), 21-27. Crew, V. Reflections on short term study and residences abroad Hong Kong: The Hong Kong Institute of Education. 2001. Print. Haferburg, C. Public Viewing areas: Urban interventions in the context of ega-events. New York: Oxford Publishers. 2009. Print. Read More