Finding our Feet

1. DSAI- TIDI Research Methodology Workshop for Development Practitioners: "Research for Results“ 9 May 2015 Su-ming Khoo School of Political Science and Sociology NUI Galway, Ireland Joanne Malone SUAS Educational Development Frank Geary Irish Development Education Association Finding our Feet Exploring interdisciplinary and intersectional research partnerships for development and global citizenship education

2. Research about HE, but for what ‘results’? ACU views on HE post-2015 EFA is too limited, endangering the prospects for endogenous and sustainable development No justice without cognitive justice HE to contributes to pro-poor professionalism Links democracy and good governance by promoting societal debate SDG 4.7 is simply overwhelming. Focus on benchmarking teaching to international standards Through research, HE provides big ideas, evidence base and ‘what works’ HE to contribute to technological catch-up and economic development

3. Transformative demands of SDGs SDG 4.7 by 2030 ensure all learners acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including among others through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship, and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development

4. ‘Result’ = transformative, inclusive HE attained through collaboration & learning • Irish Research Council New Foundations/ Dóchas partnership: UNIFY-SDG • Su Ming Khoo, National University of Ireland Galway; • SUAS Educational Development, • IDEA • A networking and knowledge sharing project to create direct research and educational linkages between DevEd NGOs (SUAS, IDEA) and state-of-the-art, ethics-centred HE research (EIHE, WERA-GEHE-IRN) • “Research for Results” re-imagined collaboration for sustainable, transformative learning • NOT Research as leading to pre-determined “results” • but ‘a seat at the table’ - connecting global educators to international research conversations about global ethics and education • resulting in collaboration and deep learning that capacitates Irish DevEd partners for thought leadership and practice • Developing strategic partnerships for research and education • priority identified in Ireland’s 2015 GENE review: global citizenship education to meet SDG 4/Target 4.7 (Education/ Education for Sustainable Development). • Forthcoming DSAI Education event (October 2016 TBA)

5. A view from SUAS • How to advance non-discriminatory global citizenship education? • That promotes equality and challenges discrimination • That brings SUAS facilitators together with researchers and academic educators in ways that will make their work more effective? • Integrate gender equality with broader understandings of non-discrimination linked to cultural and social diversity and disadvantage • Leveraging higher education research capacities within Ireland? • Can we connect development/ global citizenship educators with large, dynamic body of academic research/ practice work on internationalisation, ethics and global citizenship

6. A view from IDEA • Can we bridge the gap between the Dev Ed community/context and the wider research context? • Diversity of the Dev Ed sector is a strength – having our feet in different places provides a multiplicity of places for education and action through: • Partnership • Experimentation • Collaboration

7. Work packages • 1. April 2016 WERA-Focal Symposium at AERA ‘Troubling methodologies’ • 2. June 2016 event: What’s Gender Got To Do With It? IDEA learning capture • 3. August 2016 ECER NW22 Internationalisation Symposium: integrating postcolonial and Global South perspectives • 4. August 2016 ECER side-event: Translanguaging - crossing boundaries between North and South, and teaching and learning with a focus on linguistic communication.

8. Reflections from AERA • Largest educational research meeting, WERA-Focal Symposium on ‘troubling methodologies’ • Theme of AERA 2016: Public Scholarship for Diverse Democracies • Critiques of neoliberalization of education: loss of public purpose, growing inequities and racialization, community pushback • Analogous debates about test-based accountability, ‘evidence’ and ‘results’ versus ‘true accountability’ (New Accountability Paradigm) • Policy informed by data and analysis, centred on reciprocity, meaningful learning, professional and resource accountability (not resource capture/accumulation) • Methodological themes: research as working with communities, new practices, new media, finding ways to research large structural change and the ‘many-headed hydra’ of commodification and dispossession • Education as doing democracy and storying historical consciousness

9. Transformative demands of SDGs: SDG 4.7 by 2030 ensure all learners acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including among others through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship, and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development What’s Gender Got to Do With it?

10. Critical refraction: A sustaining and sustainable Dev Ed strategy “pluralize the future by pluralizing knowledge in the present [in order to produce ] a better, more honest and wider range of options – material, ideational and normative – for human beings and societies to choose from” (Nandy 2000: 122). recent economic crises have intensified competitive, profit-seeking priorities in internationalization policies and practices over ethical alternatives (Khoo, 2011).  

11. Transformative learning • ‘Ruins’, competing, complex ideas, values, expectations of HE - crisis of values, identity? • Lack of a theoretical framework for thinking about higher education educationally (Barnett 1990) • Transformative learning the dominant approach in professional practice and nonformal education (Khoo and Torres forthcoming) • Central questions for transformative learning concern identity and values (Cranton 1996) • Central aspects of transformative learning involve challenge to the subject’s identity and values (Mezirow) • Links important critiques of internationalization and development with questions of ethics using a specifically educational perspective.

12. (selected) References • Bridgman, Todd (2007) ‘Freedom and Autonomy in the University Enterprise’, Journal of Organizational Change Management 20(4): 478–90 • Charmaz. K (2014, 2nd ed.) Constructing Grounded Theory. London: Sage • Cranton, P. (Second edition 2006) Understanding and Promoting Transformative Learning: A Guide for Educators of Adults. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. • Cranton, P., & Taylor, E. (2012). Transformative learning theory: Seeking a more unified theory. In E. Taylor, P. Cranton, & Associates (Eds.), The Handbook of Transformative Learning: Theory, Research and Practice, (pp. 3–20). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass • Jones, A., Jones, C., & Ndaruhutse, S. (2014). Higher Education and Developmental Leadership: The Case of Ghana. Retrieved from http://publications.dlprog.org/Executive%20Summary%20-%20Higher%20Education%20and%20Developmental%20Leadership%20in%20Ghana.pdf • Kenny, Kate; Scriver, Stacey (2012) Dangerously empty? Hegemony and the construction of the Irish entrepreneur, Organization 19(5) 615–633 • Khoo, S (2015) A new Agenda for Higher Education: Re-integrating scholarships for sustainable human development DSAI Working Paper 2015/002 http://www.dsaireland.org/publications/a-new-agenda-for-higher-education-reintegrating-sc/ • Khoo, S.-m. (2014). Education for sustainable development:. In A. Robertson, Commonwealth Education Partnerships 2014/15 (pp. 24-26). London: Commonwealth Secretariat. • McGrath, S. (2013). Higher education is an integral part of development. ACU Beyond 2015 submission. • Mendis, S. (2014). Higher education for the improvement of developing countries. Retrieved from https://beyond2015.acu.ac.uk/submissions • Mezirow, J. (2009). Transformative learning theory. In J. Mezirow, E. W. Taylor, et al (Eds.), Transformative Learning in Practice. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. • Mollis, M; Marginson, S. (2004) The Assessment of Universities in Argentina and Australia: Between Autonomy and Heteronomy • Naidoo, R (2004) Fields and Institutional Strategy: Bourdieu on the Relationship between Higher Education, Inequality. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 25, 4, 457-471 • Leach, M., Raworth, K., & Rockström, J. (2013). Between Social and Planetary Boundaries: Navigating Pathways in the Safe and Just Space for Humanity. In World Social Science Report 2013. • Seidman, Steven (1984) The Main Aims and Thematic Structures of Max Weber's Sociology, The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 381-404

13. Acknowledgements • EIHE project: Academy of Finland 2012-16 • Irish Research Council New Foundations UNIFY-SDG