Barbara Ridley

Educational Research Culture and Capacity Building: The Case of Addis Ababa University

ABSTRACT This paper draws on several projects over sixteen years which attempted to develop capacity in educational research at Addis Ababa University. It identifies what might be considered indicators of a thriving research environment as defined from a UK perspective, not simply the necessary skills and infrastructure requirements but also what might be considered ‘academic ‘ or ‘intellectual’ virtues. Having outlined specific project activities, our responses and mutual learning, the paper goes on to consider how such qualities might relate to an Ethiopian academic setting where cultural norms and political contexts have tended to encourage silence and caution rather than critique and argument. Thus through these comparisons, I argue that research capacity building is not just a body of knowledge or set of techniques to be delivered through workshops, but is about the importance of developing a research culture which engages with the underlying attitudes that derive from the country context.

Evaluating musical dis/abilities: operationalizing the capability approach

We use this paper to suggest the use of Sen’s capability approach in interpreting disability. The substantive focus is our evaluation of the Drake Music Project, which uses electronic and computer technologies to enable severely disabled people to explore, compose and perform music. We consider how the process of making music enables the musicians to develop and express their sense of self. Using the capability approach as the analytic framework of this evaluation, we consider the ramifications and relevance to disability research of the capability approach. This paper therefore contributes to the literature on disability and the construction (including deconstruction and reconstruction) of identities.

Identities of dis/ability and music

Centring on a small‐scale capability‐based case study of music provision for adults with profound dis/abilities, this paper considers the significance of music and music education in people’s lives. It offers a philosophical defence of music’s importance in enjoying a truly human life and then, drawing on an overview of the work of dis/abled artists and the findings of the case study, it addresses two issues that may inhibit those with dis/abilities from achieving the good life through musical endeavour: the provision of specialised musical equipment to enable people of different physical abilities to achieve the same end of making music; and the element of shame that may cause those with dis/abilities to accept a reduced standard of living. Although our immediate concern is with musical provision for those with profound dis/abilities, our argument is pertinent to other marginalised groups and curricula.

1.1 Historical Narratives in Ethiopia

This chapter considers how historical and contemporary narratives can be used to interpret issues of educational organisation and leadership. The research on which it is based sought to understand academic freedom and institutional autonomy through a case study of Addis Ababa University (AAU) between 1950 and 2005. This 55 year period saw three markedly different political regimes: feudalism (1950–1974), socialism (1974–1991) and democratic federalism (1991–2005). Historical narratives must make sense of stories told over time. The stories told during this study included contemporaneous archival materials narrating the points of view of the different political regimes in power and the leaderships of AAU and the reflective narratives of academics, including the lead researcher, Amare, who had lived through these periods. The research asked whether or not academic freedom and autonomy were attainable in a context of mutual support: the university that was responsible to the state that supported and funded it but, at the same time, the university itself played a central role in national politics. The nature of relationships between university and state is complex. The requirements to be free and accountable at the same time create tensions, especially when viewed from the point of view of the different ideas of the university. More pragmatically, if the university depends on the state both for its funding and for defining its value in serving society, then also stating itself to be independent of that same state is unrealistic.

Articulating the Power of Dance

Making some minor changes to the syllabus of a peripheral GCE subject – Advanced Level (A-level) Dance – would hardly seem to be of much importance to anyone except dance students and their teachers. But the loss of dance notation is not as unimportant as it might appear: there are implications for the status of dance in the curriculum, for its ability to attract a range of students and for the development of the subject itself. Whilst being a popular social activity, in UK schools dance is constructed as a physical subject with an aesthetic gloss, languishing at the bottom of the academic hierarchy. Dance as a discipline is marginalised in academic discourse as an ephemeral, performance-focused subject, its power articulated through the body. Yet dance is more than just performance: to dismiss it as purely bodies in action is to ignore not only the language of its own structural conventions but also the language in which it might be recorded. Using the notion of docile bodies, the author considers the centrality of the body as instrument in defining the power of dance and how Foucaults mechanisms of power and knowledge are exemplified in current conceptions of dance in education.