Diving from the Bridge

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Diving from the Bridge an Action Research
project on active student engagement in
BosniaJuliet Millican CuppUniversity of
Brighton
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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

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Student Community Engagement

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

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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

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Background is Foreground (Stephens 2007)

• Contextual levels
• Cultural,
• National,
• Regional
• Global
• (Crossley and Watson, 2003 16)

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• 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).

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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)

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Participatory Action Research

• 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

• Principles
• Participation,
• Reflection,
• Linking of theory to practice,
• Solutions to issues of concern
• Flourishing of individuals and communities,
• Reason and Bradbury 20014

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• 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.

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Action Research project over 2 years(participator
y? 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

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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

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Adapting existing curricula

• New pedagogical approaches,
• Similar specified learning outcomes,
• Experimental methods of assessment through
• Reflection
• Practical project
• Written Exams

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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

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Svijet u kojem živimo se mijenja

• (students with community in co-operation)