International Educational Development and Learning through Sustainable Partnerships

Living Global Citizenship

S. Coombs, M. Potts, J. Whitehead

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137349989
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

Addressing the debate around what makes a good citizen, this work proposes a new form of post-colonial citizenship education which can be applied in any cultural setting. International educational partnerships provide the opportunity for participants to live out values such as cultural empathy and thus demonstrate their right to citizenship.

1

Transforming International Educational Development through Living Global Citizenship

In this first chapter we establish the origins of the idea of ‘Living Global Citizenship’ and we represent it as three transformations in thinking that have taken place over the past 12 years as we have engaged in discussions about the nature of international educational development and learning through partnerships. We set it in the context of the discourse regarding partnerships between the Global South and the Global North, arguing that it is consistent with a postcolonial perspective that seeks to address issues of injustice and unequal power relations. We also position it in terms of the debate regarding educational cosmopolitanism and universal values and suggest that such notions ignore the importance of learning from difference, whereby difference is to be celebrated as a cultural asset. Finally, we suggest that Living Global Citizenship, by putting values at the heart of partnerships, can be regarded as an antidote to the prevalent ideas of deskilling, demoralisation and devaluation inherent in contemporary economic rationalism.

The reader should note the three conceptual assumptions we make regarding the distinctions of living global citizenship, cultural empathy and living cases as theoretical concepts as opposed to the interpretation of their inherent personal values as acts-of-being. Please therefore note the terminology and syntax used

below to help separate these distinctions we use throughout the book:

1. Throughout the book we make a distinction between the general theoretical concept of Living Global Citizenship and the unique personal act of meaning that an individual is seeking to live as fully as possible in living-global-citizenship.

2. We make a similar distinction between Cultural Empathy as a social value and cultural-empathy as the unique embodied expression of personal meaning as an individual seeks to live their value of cultural-empathy as fully as possible.

3. We also refer to an individual who is generating evidence through participation in a Living Global Citizenship project as a Living Case and the personal act of participation and generation of evidence as a living-case in the same manner that the personal act of generating a project’s Video Case evidence can be referred to as a video-case.

1.1 Three transformations in learning – the emergence of Living Global Citizenship

We have identified three transformations in learning that led us to write this book and to promote the idea of Living Global Citizenship as a new form of international educational development.

1.1.1 First transformation – recognising the possibility of influencing others

The first transformation was recognition that it is possible to conduct research into how an individual can influence others as practising professionals and that this research can make a wider contribution to the academy as new professional learning knowledge.

Mark writes: As a deputy head in a state school in the United Kingdom, I was responsible for developing the professional practice of colleagues. As I enquired into the way that I worked with colleagues, I reflected on how I was influencing both my own and their practice. I grew in confidence as a researcher into my own professional practice through engagement in educational enquiries of the sort that start with the question, ‘How can I improve my educational practice?’ In Jack Whitehead’s (1993) words, I began the process of developing my own Living Educational Theory.

The term ‘Living Educational Theory’ is used here in the way that Jack Whitehead used the term as stated in his address to the 12th International Conference of Teacher Research at McGill University in April 2005.

I want to see if I can captivate your imaginations with the idea of your living educational theory. I see your accounts of your learning, to the extent that they are explaining your educational influence in this learning, as constituting your own living educational theory.

(Whitehead, 2005)

Living Educational Theory provides recognition for practitioners as knowledge creators. Through studying their practice, teachers (and any other similar professionals) can generate their own theories of practice, which they then make available for public testing. The individual practitioner who undertakes the research is at the heart of their own educational enquiry. The practitioner researcher is responsible for holding themselves to account for their potential influence on the learning of others. In this approach the aim of the researcher is to hold themselves accountable for their learning and their influence in the learning of others (McNiff, 2006). This approach appealed to me as an educator as it seemed to provide the opportunity to be creative and for me to be methodologically inventive (Dadds & Hart, 2001).

In 2000 I established an international educational partnership between my own school in the United Kingdom and a black township school in Durban, South Africa. In deciding to conduct an enquiry into ‘How can I improve the delivery of citizenship education through an international school partnership?’, I was holding myself accountable for my own learning and the learning of others from the partnership activities. The motivation to conduct such an enquiry emerged from my experiences as I visited the black township school and began to engage in dialogue with educators at the school. I came to recognise that I was not fully living out my values as a professional educator, and I wanted to examine how I could improve my practice to overcome the contradiction between the values that I express and the values that I was living out in my practice. The values that emerged from the dialogue between participants were social justice, equal opportunities and Ubuntu (a Zulu phrase loosely translated as ‘humanity’). Through participation in the partnership and reflection on my values in dialogue with the other participants, we were seeking to engage in activities that would influence the social formations in which we were operating. The living theory approach to action research best suits my perception of people as human beings who live in relation to each other and who are participants in educating themselves and creating their own lives. This enquiry was the next part of my living educational theory. It is living because it is active. Through engagement in this research project, I was embodying my own values as a person and as a professional educator. As I came to understand and appreciate my own values and to live them out more fully, I was furthering my own professional development and contributing to the social manifesto research agenda. The concept of a social manifesto linked to action research was first proposed by Steve Coombs (1995) as part of his doctoral thesis and later followed up by Gardner and Coombs (2010). The key idea was to differentiate between hypothesis-based research enquiry linked to a ‘prove’ type agenda and a more practical needs-based social change approach, or a shift towards an ‘improve’ type research agenda. Thus, the research methodology requires a paradigm shift from ‘prove’ based experimental research to a more practical ‘improve’ approach that suits projects linked to change through social inquiry and action. Action research is a suitable methodology that aligns itself to just such an ‘improve’ applied experimental research paradigm and the research questions, and social tasks that need to be achieved can be suitably described as befitting a social manifesto approach linked to the project’s values, needs and actions. This represents a paradigm shift from hypothesis-based research questions towards a social manifesto of social enquiry tasks and actions that can be achieved through action research. This social research paradigm identifies a different type of research question that relates to achieving social inquiry action and goals as defined and measured as a form of success against the project’s predetermined ‘social manifesto’.

We acknowledge that this approach fits with recent moves in the international development sector that is considering moving the UNESCO Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to a new agenda defined by Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),¹ requiring social impact targets that require a new research methodology and agenda and something that all countries need to meet, not just developing nations. We would argue that the Living Global Citizenship methodology provides a new way of understanding and meeting this sustainable development agenda and approach.

In conclusion, the first transformation was the recognition that we as professional educators can, through the examination of our own practice, contribute to educational theory in an original, creative, valid and meaningful way. By doing so, we add our own living educational theories as valid professional learning experiences to the knowledgebase of the ‘academy’ and thereby create a shared living legacy. In many ways the sharing of experiential derived professional knowledge should become the new common law code of practice and working standard for all active professionals in the twenty-first century global societies.

1.1.2 Second transformation – living citizenship emerging from an international educational partnership

Mark writes: During my first visit to the South African school, I met and talked to the students about their own lives. I vividly recall the conversations held about their hopes and dreams for their own futures and for the future of their country.

In the gaze of a South African student I saw the joy and optimism of his youth. I saw the humanity of the gaze as he shows his love for me with whom he is communicating. When I spoke with him and others like him about his hopes and dreams for the future they were full of ambition, yet they were also well aware of the likelihood that their ambitions will not be realised because of the tragic realities of their lives. They are living in communities that are decimated by AIDS and by poverty. Their time and energy is taken by providing enough food for their families to eat.

(Potts, 2012)

A short video is available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rY1eqHQP20.

There was human tragedy in this picture and in the stories that I heard that touched my inner being and urged me to act. These were the first stirrings of what we now recognise as Living Global Citizenship. I claim that my response to this student expresses my value of cultural-empathy. As a result of my visit to the black township of a South African school, I was experiencing a concern that my values were not being fully lived in my practice. I formulated a plan and data was gathered to consider how to address this concern. Analysis of the data and reflection on the findings led to actions being taken and the development of a sustained² and active relationship between participants at the UK and South African schools. (For further discussion of this partnership see Chapter 4.)

Thus, the ‘Living Citizenship’ conceptual framework emerged from this action enquiry project carried out over 12 years, studying this intercultural partnership between a school in Salisbury, United Kingdom, and a black township school in South Africa. In this book, we offer a reconceptualisation of international educational partnerships as a form of ‘Living Citizenship’. Just as through the development of a living-educational-theory the researcher is active, in the present and engaged through the research in living out his/her own values more fully, so through ‘living-citizenship’, the participants in the partnership are actively engaged in living out their values more fully through the activities of the partnership. Through this engagement they develop opportunities for living out their values as active citizens. Within this process, there are transferable pedagogical protocols that both define and enable participants to live out their values more fully as active citizens, and these can be applied to other international educational partnerships implying a new socio-ethical blueprint for planning and implementing international education development projects.

Living citizenship recognises the contribution that can be made by educational partnerships to improving the lives of oneself and of others, focusing on the question, ‘How am I contributing to improving the lives of others?’ The importance of stressing the idea of a ‘contribution’ to the lives of others is to acknowledge that whatever I do, with the intention of helping others to improve their lives, is going to be mediated by the creative response of the other to what I do. In other words I do not believe that I have a ‘causal’ influence in the lives of others of the kind, ‘If I do this, then that will happen’. I believe that I have an intentional relationship in which what I do must be mediated by the creative response of the other for me to recognise any learning as ‘educational’. Living Citizenship projects are motivated by the desire to contribute to the improvement of our own lives and to the lives of others (Whitehead & Huxtable, 2013) and provide a key goal or statement in any emergent social manifesto (Coombs, 1995).

Yet, at this stage the transformation is incomplete. This second transformation is insufficient in that it contains a worldview that is consistent with the dominant neoliberal discourse of development that roughly sees the Global North as providing solutions to the problems of the Global South. Hence, the importance of the third transformation from ‘living-citizenship’ to ‘living-global-citizenship’ with the incorporation of a postcolonial perspective on development that recognises that the focus of any partnership should not solely be on economic poverty, but should also examine and confront the issues of injustice and power relations. Thus, such transformed partnerships need to initially negotiate their terms of reference through jointly identifying and articulating the key shared values of importance to all participants. Such a ‘valuesled’ agenda predicates the flow of all such actions that any project may take forward. It can also usefully underpin any social manifesto or bespoke ‘charter agreement’ that builds in the unique cultural contexts and needs of all the participants. In this way Living Global Citizenship-designed (and inspired) projects celebrate and put cultural difference and knowledge at the heart of any international partnership. Understanding different cultural contexts and celebrating such ‘difference’ as part of the essential design of any partnership project requires a core value we refer to as Cultural Empathy that we explore in the next section.

1.1.3 Third transformation – living citizenship as Cultural Empathy becomes Living Global Citizenship

What makes living-citizenship become living-global-citizenship? This is one of the central questions that this book seeks to explore and provide some answers to. We believe that the global perspective of citizenship occupies a description of humanity itself. We are describing humanity in terms of its rich cultural differences and contributions to a twenty-first century world. So a global citizen can be understood in terms of cultural origins, exchange and development. Moreover, the ability of an emerging global citizen to appreciate other cultures and societies and move towards a common shared set of values and understanding is a valuable goal. This global appreciation of other cultures, traditions and values is something we argue as ‘cultural empathy’. Cultural empathy is both a social policy and an act of humanity, and when combined with our notion of living-citizenship, it helps us to define what we mean by ‘living-global-citizenship’. Cultural empathy also helps us to celebrate and appreciate the richness of ‘cultural difference’ as promoted by Fran Martin and H. Griffiths (2012) and others (Andreotti, 2011; Todd, 2008). While cultural empathy is a human, indeed, ‘living’ human quality, it is also something that can be formulated into social and educational policy. Existing educational areas such as citizenship can become ‘global-citizenship’ where such a curriculum includes both content and activities that enable cultural empathy to take place. Clearly, cultural empathy goes beyond mere study. It is something that needs to be acted upon and experienced by all those engaged within such a curriculum. Going further, we can argue that the multidimensional social nature of cultural empathy, when extended into global-citizenship, has the potential to add genuine societal value to a problematic area of social policy such as multiculturalism that traditionally operates within national contexts. The social problems of global mobility and the consequent emerging multicultural societies have been largely responsible for the introduction of national citizenship education programmes in the first place:

Citizenship education has arisen against a social backdrop of considerable social and political upheaval caused by the rise of nationalism and increased disregard for ‘civic virtues’. Within this climate the nation state can no longer be viewed as the given natural order.

(Simon, 2005, p. 1)

According to QCA (1999) citizenship education is further propelled by the ‘increasingly complex nature of our society, the greater cultural diversity and the apparent loss of value consensus, combined with the collapse of traditional support mechanisms such as extended families’ (p. 7).

According to UNESCO (2000) citizenship education is about ‘education for human rights, peace, international understanding, tolerance and nonviolence. It also includes all aspects of education relating to the principles of democracy and multicultural and intercultural education’ (p. 2).

In this sense a global citizenship programme has the potential to add greater social and educational value to an otherwise more limited national citizenship programme. When citizenship education was launched in UK secondary schools in 1999, Crick recognised its potential educational value: ‘Citizenship is more than a statutory subject. If taught well and tailored to local needs, its skills and values will enhance democratic life for us all, both rights and responsibilities, beginning in school, and radiating out’ (Crick, 1999).

Though Crick’s vision for citizenship education may seem ambitious, it is one that we share and that we believe Living Global Citizenship can aspire to. A Living Global Citizenship education curriculum would be one in which its participants engage with and develop a real sense of cultural empathy through the ‘living’ activities and opportunities offered. These might include a new interpretation and delivery of international educational exchange visits; smart uses of technology and social networking sites to enable greater access to cultural experiences; and new types of professional development for the educational workforce through a reconceptualisation of international educational development and an introduction of a new form of international continuing professional development (ICPD). This book explores and develops all of these ideas and provides the reader with some interesting insights and solutions to try out in practice.

1.2 Living Global Citizenship and postcolonialism

The neoliberal paradigm that currently appears to dominate education has a focus mainly on top-down International Development. That dominant educational discourse is one which focuses on what is lacking in other countries when judged against Western lifestyles and assumed standards. This is in accord with the dominant discourse about Africa portrayed through the media. From ‘Live Aid’ in 1987 to ‘Live 8’ in 2004, the focus has been on Africa as a poverty stricken continent dependent on the West to help it to raise its standard of living (Martin, 2012). Certainly there is poverty in Africa, but there is a danger in focusing solely on economic poverty, that we miss the richness of culture, history and society that is inherent in the Global South. There is, as Chimamanda Adichie (2009) says, more than a ‘single story’ of Africa as a ‘place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people, fighting senseless wars and waiting to be saved, by a kind white foreigner’. On another level this dominant discourse masks the issues of power and control exerted by the North over the South. ‘This matters to education because teachers’ worldviews are informed by broader societal discourses and have a profound impact on how North-South intercultural experiences are interpreted within the context of global educational partnerships’ (Martin, 2012). This discourse is prevalent in other fields as well. Adler-Collins (2013b) refers to the colonisation by the West of the medical practices in China and Japan.

One of the major areas where this is evident is in nursing education where, through the influence...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Transforming International Educational Development through Living Global Citizenship
• 2. Pedagogy for Effective Citizenship Education
• 3. Living Theory Transformed into Living Global Citizenship
• 4. Living Legacies: Living Global Citizenship in Action
• 5. Designing a Living Global Citizenship Project
• 6. Propositions for Living Global Citizenship Projects
• 7. Living Global Citizenship: Lessons for Humanity
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index