Development Education and Educational Development –

Putting the global perspective into professional practice

Elizabeth Grant, University of Leicester, UK

Glynis Cousin, Higher Education Academy, York, UK

Working effectively with diversity and promoting Inclusivity

• Identify and seek to meet the many and varied learning needs of the learners with whom we work.

•Offer opportunities for us and for our learners to learn from [each other]

•Where appropriate, to learn about each other.

•Seek to ensure that each learner has, as far as is possible, the same or appropriately equivalent opportunity to learn, develop and succeed.

(SEDA values)

Responses:

•In the real life of an academic today in this University and in all universities, to do this properly is just not going to happen. We do not have the time, energy, or skill.

•If we see people as individuals, there is no way we can cope with individual needs,

•Identify the needs of, say 120 people, including both international and home students, is impossible.

•Things like learning from each other seem like toddlers stuff.

The individual or the environment?

It’s got to be best practice for departments to know as much as possible about their cohorts, not necessarily as individuals, their backgrounds, where they come from, how and why they came here, so that they can improve their practices.

2001 - Report from the Education Council to the European Council"The concrete future objectives of education and training systems"

1) The development of the individual, who can thus realise his or her full potential and live a good life

Responses from tutors

•a) Conflict between societal needs and those of the individual

•b) What does ‘good life’ mean?

The development of society, in particular by fostering democracy, reducing the disparities and inequities among individuals and groups and promoting cultural diversity,

Response from tutors Democracy can be interpreted differently in

different contexts (even in different democratic countries)

Learning democracy

Britain's record on educating its citizens for democracy is particularly deficient with nothing in the curriculum even approximating to the sort of political education required in a mature, modern society’ (Harber, 1995)

The development of the economy, by ensuring that the skills of the labour force correspond to the economic and technological evolution.

Responses from tutors

•a) Conflict between economic need and social need

•b) DEBT! This is one of the economic consequences of higher education.

So what responses can we offer….

Our approaches to diversity: 1

Multiculturalism (emphasis on mutual respect and tolerance for cultural differences within a country’s borders)

Postcolonial An emphasis on the otherising effects of colonialism; a sensitivity to ‘the west/the rest opposition

2

- Anti-anti-anti- racist (victim identified)

- Postmodern (cultural hybridity – the logic of globalisation entails that traces of other cultures exist in every culture)

3

Cosmopolitanism (the idea that all of humanity belongs to a single moral community)

Development education (eradicate poverty, global equality)

Associated approaches to teaching and learning

Multicultural (diversity of texts and tolerance of difference – risk of essentialism)

Postcolonial and postmodern (resisting otherising of students and teachers. Blending different ideas from different traditions)

Cosmopolitan (focus on global communities of academics and learners)

How can Educational Development…

enable people to understand the links between their own lives and those of people throughout the world?

increase understanding of the global economic, social and political environmental forces which shape our lives?

2

develop the skills, attitudes and values which enable people to work together to bring about change and to take control of their own lives?

work to achieve a more just and sustainable world in which power and resources are equitably shared?

Inter-connectedness?

(www.bbc.co.uk/live8)

To discuss

Are we a parochial tribe? Do we need to review our values? If so, how should this be done? Should we be aiming to be global

universities?