Conference Agenda

Rural education systems and smallholder farming communities in Colombia and across Latin America face parallel challenges related to agricultural sustainability, technological renewal, and long-term generational continuity. In rural schools, limited opportunities for applied technological engagement weaken students’ capacity to connect agricultural education with future career pathways, while among small and medium-scale producers, the adoption of Agriculture 4.0 technologies remains limited. Although tools such as Internet of Things, drone-based sensing, and augmented reality offer benefits for productivity and environmental management, their lack of a significant presence in rural contexts underscores the need to better understand how such technologies are perceived, interpreted, and evaluated within everyday educational and farming practices. In response, this paper defines an adoption-oriented analytical framework for examining how Agriculture 4.0 technologies are introduced and assessed across rural agricultural education and smallholder farming settings. The framework is structured around a two-phase process that first examines perception formation following contextualized technological exposure and subsequently analyses evaluative judgment emerging through applied interaction in settings that approximate real agricultural decision-making. The department of Meta, Colombia, is designated as the intended application context for the framework, although full implementation is beyond the scope of the present study. Preliminary results draw on baseline surveys, interviews, and early qualitative observations to characterize initial adoption-related perceptions and to validate the readiness of the technological and pedagogical components supporting future framework execution. The proposed framework establishes a structured methodological basis for continued study and is intended to be transferable to other rural regions with comparable educational and socio-productive conditions.