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This article discusses the planning process for the multiple pedagogical activities organized and carried out by the public service of Rural Technical Assistance and Extension (Ater) together with the people who live, work and produce in Brazilian rural territories, seeking to revisit the literature that correlates Rural Extension actions with the field of Education. To this end, it seeks to outline parallels between the teaching-learning processes present in the relationships between teachers and students, with the personal, professional and institutional interactions between extension workers and farmers. It points to the converging points that permeate the structural elements of the didactic organization of a class planned by education professionals, and the diverse Ater actions that are planned by rural extension workers.

This study examined the reconfigurations in the field of extension work and its potential influences in the academic discipline of rural extension. It recognizes that one of the ongoing changes has an institutional nature and is related to the adoption of a pluralist model of rural extension. It is argued that the adoption of a pluralist model leads to the recognition of a greater diversity of types of organizations active in the rural extension system, which favors the occurrence of processes of customization of normative references that are used to guide the extension field work. A comprehensive literature review was performed to characterize these dynamics in the global and Brazilian scope, exploring their implications for the rural extension teaching. The results suggest that this movement implies a scenario of professional profile disputes that reflects, ultimately, disputes over projects for rural development, which must be made explicit within the scope of teaching, highlighting their relationships with the normative references for action professional.

The training of rural extension agents is key to address effectively the challenges of practice. In general, the academic literature on extension training presents proposals from the perspective of researchers and specialists. In this paper, the proposals and recommendations of rural extension agents from six Latin American countries to strengthen their knowledge and training are systematized and analyzed. We interviewed 133 extension agents, 47 women and 86 men. The results allowed us to identify different facilitators of the training of extensionists, as well as recommendations at the individual, group and institutional levels, and for the formal educational system. The recommendations of the interviewees show the need to think about the training of extension agents beyond the design of training plans, and the importance of generating environments that facilitate learning, selecting and retaining trained personnel, carrying out initial induction actions, institutionalizing mentoring, facilitating peer exchange meetings, design long-term training plans, and identifying future knowledge needs. In summary, the evidence shows that it is necessary that extension institutions design comprehensive training strategies that consider the diversity of sources of knowledge and learning.

The pilot project of rural extension in Andulo (Bié, Angola) has been presented as an instrument for the Portuguese counter-subversion in the context of the colonial war. It has also been especially associated with the German engineer Hermann Pössinger, its proponent and technical advisor. Based on archival research, the biographical method and oral history, this paper presents a more complex and global history of this experience, following profession and institutional paths. It turns out that the project was part of a circulation involving America, Europe and Africa, it benefited from previous work of the Angolan Agricultural Surveys Mission, reflected the knowledge of the social and economic structures of the Ovimbundu and a vision of integral development of the African peasants. The participatory and potentially empowering dimension of the project re-addresses us to the dialectical contradiction of Portuguese late colonial politics on the eve of the end of empire.

The article analyzes the institutional and methodological reorganization of agricultural extension introduced by the National Agricultural Extension Directorate in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security. This analysis identifies the gap between proposals and implementations, consequence of the assumptions taken on the institutional and technical capacities in the apprehension and implementation of those proposals. Thus, it is proposed forms of intervention and training content aimed at overcoming the gap, establishing the reorganization of the extension under the principles of a national extension system. For this, new occupational functions and organizational roles are suggested, in addition to structured interventions aimed at achieving socioeconomic changes integrated into the agricultural development programs.