Diving from the Bridge – an Action Research project

on active student engagement in Bosnia

Juliet Millican Cupp

University of Brighton

Key issues for discussion

• The importance of context in adapting and transferring pedagogic approaches and in making sense of research findings

• The difficulty of combining a participatory action research project with a piece of accredited academic study

Student Community Engagement

• Involvement of the university with its local community for mutual benefit, of community groups, academic staff and students

The Bosnian Context• Still ‘post conflict’ more

then ten years after the war

• Weak civil society with low local participation and ownership

• An imposed democracy, no culture of involvement

• High unemployment, low aspirations and a very passive student population

• ‘Missing generation’ of professionals, older professors with young teaching assistants keen to develop practice

Background is Foreground (Stephens 2007)

Contextual levels: • Cultural, • National, • Regional • Global

(Crossley and Watson, 2003: 16)

• Education is always political, educators and students should become ‘transformative intellectuals’ (Giroux 1998) ‘cultural workers’ (Freire 1998) capable of identifying and redressing the injustices, inequalities and myths of an often oppressive world. (Gruenewald 2003)

• Freire (1970) ‘People as beings in a situation find themselves rooted in temporal-spatial conditions which mark them and which they also mark, They will tend to reflect on their own ‘situationality’ to the extent that they are challenged by it to act upon it. Human beings are because they are in a situation. And they will be more the more they not only critically reflect upon their existence but critically act upon it. (p90).

Assumptions

• Students would be interested in doing something for their local communities (Ignatief,1993 post WWII)

• Communities will welcome the input of local students (Brighton 2008)

• Universities should be concerned with self knowledge as well as knowledge about the world (Bourner 1998)

• Faculty would recognise the value of practitioner and experiential knowledge (Taylor and Fransen 2003)

Participatory Action ResearchPrinciples :• Participation,• Reflection, • Linking of theory to

practice, • Solutions to issues of

concern • Flourishing of

individuals and communities,

Reason and Bradbury 2001:4

• subject to constraints imposed by academic convention

• unable to be entirely responsive to process of action/ reflection.

• needed strong involvement from local teachers, but ultimately not owned by them.

• responsibility for writing up lay with a single author

Co-operative enquiry Heron and Reason (2000) • 1st stage of hypothesis or propositional knowing. • 2nd action phase of testing out original ideas, resulting in a

phase of practical knowing. • 3rd stage, transfers ownership to co-researchers, involves

experiential knowing. • 4th stage brings in reflection on experiences and data

collected and a reframing of the original principles to context in which they are based.

A negotiated process, beginning with propositions developed in another context (in this case Brighton) bringing these into a practical action phase (in this case a workshop in Mostar) and encouraging lecturers there to use them in their own way through their own teaching, seemed the only way to truly reflect on their relevance.

Action Research project over 2 years(participatory? collaborative?)

Worked with tutors and students in

• Drama Pedagogy: workshops in a local orphanage

• Engineering: design of prosthesis for disabled people

• English Literature: writing text for voluntary organisations

• English Language: teaching in a local primary school

• German Language: working with local tour guides

• Fine Arts: running arts workshops with special needs children and developing logos for voluntary organisations

Research Questions

1.What is the role of Higher Education in a post conflict context?

2. How far can SCE contribute to bridging social capital, participation in democratic processes, learning and work

Adapting existing curricula

New pedagogical approaches,

Similar specified learning outcomes,

Experimental methods of assessment through

Reflection

Practical project

Written Exams

Conclusions• Processes of reflection to be used by

students became part of tutor research• Light touch collaborative research, handed

over responsibility for design and identification of project to tutors

• Unstructured interviews led to open responses and shared freedom for research issues and project design

• BUT crucial questions unanswered at the end of the research period

Svijet u kojem živimo se mijenja

(students with community in

co-operation)