Today I had the pleasure of presenting the TEN
team's work to the National Teaching and Learning Forum as part of their
inaugural Teaching Experts Award. At Maynooth University TEN is Prof. Anne
Ryan, Prof. Martin Downes, Dr. Bernie Grummell, Maggie Noone and myself.
However we are but the tip of the iceberg of all our colleagues and students in
Mzuzu University (Malawi), the Open University and Mulungushi University
(Zambia) who made this project a huge success, teaching awards or not. Below is
the script of the presentation I tried to give in representing the excellent
work of all. Of course all this falls waaay short of reality.
Challenges
Addressed
Our project speaks to two grand challenges facing
higher education. First we live in a world of unprecedented social, economic
and environmental change. One unique aspect of contemporary change is that it
can be characterised as ‘wicked’ - complex with multiple interactions that cross multiple governance boundaries,
change that creates social, economic and environmental feedbacks that result in
deep uncertainties and present profound ethical and moral challenges and
engenders a lack of agreement about cause and solution.
Navigating the scale and complexity of contemporary
change cannot be done from a single disciplinary perspective and requires
Universities to transition to creating knowledge that involves moving beyond
constrained disciplinary boundaries to inter-disciplinary learning. Learning
that integrates the strengths and insights from across disciplines, building on
action, experimentation and evaluation. Learning that moves beyond the ivory
tower to engage meaningfully with stakeholders to develop deep understanding and
pedagogical tools that equip graduates with the skills necessary in managing
change and uncertainty in a complex world.
The second challenge is the hegemonic positioning of
western knowledge, science and technology in determining how we should respond
to global challenges. Epistemologies of the north dominate education, research
and development. This is despite the fact that those who are most vulnerable
are often very far from western science, much closer to culture, and have
different ways of knowing and understanding the world. Developing the types of
knowledge necessary to address contemporary dilemmas requires transformation of
approaches used in teaching, research and engagements that include the
knowledge and perspectives of those who are excluded - those that are most
vulnerable.
What
we did
Against these
challenges we developed an international inter-disciplinary masters in
Transformative Community Development with the objective of i) transforming the
nature of engagement between agencies, universities and communities who are
vulnerable to climate change and food security, ii). to bridge the divide
between the types of knowledge critical to sustainable development and iii). to
empower the most vulnerable with increased agency in responding to the
challenges they face.
Our masters was built
on partnerships. Partnerships for learning that respected different approaches
and ways of knowing. Partnerships across institutions – our own and three
African Universities (2 in Zambia and 1 in Malawi). Partnerships across
disciplines, including Geography, Adult and Community Education, Biology,
Sociology, Hydrology and Land Management. Partnerships between students and
academics, learning together rather than through instruction, and critically
partnerships beyond the academy between communities and universities. Each of
our partner Universities selected a community of practice around which we
scaffolded our learning. These communities of practice comprised smallholder
farmers and the agencies and professionals that worked with them – providing
the site upon which student learning and research was grounded and informed.
Our students were professionals
who worked with the communities on various aspects of climate change and food
security – employed by national and local government agencies, national and
international NGOs. Our aim was for these students to become agents of
transformation, taking the insights from their learning back to their workplace,
employing the pedagogies of transformative learning to create opportunities for
lasting change.
Our masters was built
around blended learning, in the first year online modules were developed on
moodle by academic teams from across disciplines at each partner university
while on site discussions and workshops had the purpose of linking learning
with the experience of communities.
Mainstream pedagogies can
position those outside the academy as knowledge-deficient. Similarly,
mainstream development discourses can assume that an important ‘cause’ of
poverty among groups such as smallholder farmers is a lack of modern scientific
information and as a result much effort is spent conveying such information to
smallholders. By contrast the transformative learning pedagogies drawn on in
this Masters sought to position outside agencies and communities as knowledge
pioneers, possessing and creating knowledge as they need it. Both of our
exemplars highlight the innovations taken in this regard and the utility of
these approaches to other learning contexts.
In the second year
students undertook their research within the communities on topics that
required interdisciplinary skills, deep engagement with communities and
critical reflection on their own embedded ways of doing things.
Outcomes
Evaluation of learning impacts revealed that most of
our students experienced transformative outcomes, experiencing a deep shift in
world view, deeper self awareness and acting differently. Many of these aspects
are evident in a reflective quote from one of our students - an agricultural
extension worker;
"My
participation in this programme has made me appreciate that within any
community, there is a wealth of knowledge and experience, which if harnessed,
can be used to change Communities for the better. I have come to realise that
members of the community are assets- they have answers to the problems they
face, thus, problems faced in communities can best be solved by
community-dwellers themselves. My role now is to enable people in the community
to act together to find solutions to their problems so that they can achieve
their desired goals."
Evaluation of learning processes
among our students reveal that routes to transformation are complex and require
the integration of multiple pedagogical perspectives in facilitating transformation
for individual students.
Communities themselves
developed closer links with universities and agencies, increased trust and
increased agency. For the Universities lasting collaborative linkages have been
developed as well as a capacity to work in non-traditional ways. For our
African partners this was their first masters programme and has been sustained
and expanded.
For academics
developing truly interdisciplinary and integrated approaches to learning requires
openness on behalf of academics to interrogate the values that underpin our worldviews
and an openness to criticism and risk-taking beyond the ivory tower. However, a
willingness to do so results in deeper learning for the academic also. Finally
extending the learning experience beyond the academy reinforces the need to avoid
exceptionalism in addressing contemporary challenges and giving more voice to
the most vulnerable.
