Diane Gillespie

University students’ attitudes about learning in small groups after frequent participation

This study examined the frequency of small groups in university students’ coursework and how that related to their general attitudes toward learning in groups and their views about different aspects of group work. We administered a survey to 208 students in an upper-division interdisciplinary arts and sciences program. Students reported that they had been in multiple groups, of different duration and types, both in their current program and in courses at their lower-division institutions. A regression analysis uncovered strong relationships between students’ past and present group experiences, peers, and instructor clarity about group purpose. The findings suggest that successful group work is no longer a matter of instructor effort but requires campus initiatives and interdepartmental coordination if students are to understand and experience the benefits of learning in small groups.

The Transformative Power of Democracy and Human Rights in Nonformal Education: The Case of Tostan

This case study analyzes the introduction of democracy and human rights into the educational program of Tostan, a nongovernmental organization working in Africa. The authors show how Tostan’s original educational approach created a meaningful context for integrating democracy and human rights into its curriculum, a process that took place from 1995 to 2003. The integration produced unexpected results: a participant-led social movement to end harmful practices such as female genital cutting and child and/or forced marriage. After describing the phases of curricular revision in the case, the authors draw out themes to show how the phases interacted to produce social transformation. A visioning exercise at the beginning of the program created a discursive context for the introduction of democracy and human rights, the democracy and human rights sessions created critical reflection about past practices, and awareness of an international human rights framework emboldened participants to undertake actions that created new social norms.

Values Deliberation and Collective Action: Community Empowerment in Rural Senegal

This book describes how a program of values deliberations–-sustained group reflections on local values, aspirations, beliefs and experiences, blending with discussions of how to understand and to realize human rights--led to individual and collective empowerment in communities in rural Senegal. The study explains what happens during the deliberations and shows how they bring about a larger process that results in improved capabilities in areas such as education, health, child protection, and gender equality. It shows how participants, particularly women, enhance their agency, including their individual and collective capacities to play public roles and kindle community action. It thus provides important insights on how values deliberations help to revise adverse gender norms.

Community Values and Aspirations as the CEP Arrives

This chapter describes the social and personal values of respondents at the outset of Tostan’s Community Empowerment Program (CEP). Several themes or categories emerge from the interviews gathered after the first session and from recollections expressed later in the Democracy and Human Rights Sessions (DHRS). The themes and subthemes (italicized below) provide a baseline from which changes are tracked over time. Participants’ hopes (Beyond the Individual) are for increased well-being of their families, finding the right path and desiring honesty and forgiveness in relationships. Their Commonly Shared Personal Values include working to achieve one’s goals (Working Hard), fulfilling gender roles (Being Men and Women), and raising children (Caring about Children). Their Commonly Shared Aspirations are Education, a Better Future, Better Health, Working Together, and Being in Public.

Learning and Values Deliberations During the Democracy and Human Rights Sessions (DHRS), 2010

The chapter summarizes how respondents’ values and aspirations developed as the Democracy and Human Rights (DHR) deliberations progressed, and how those changes created new intentions to act for the benefit of all. From participants’ discourse, the authors trace the process of change and the key topics that animated deliberation and sparked re-assessment of practices. Respondents learned to deliberate publicly; engage in organized diffusion, from class members to a broader public; imagine a better future; develop new self-understandings; and work together to realize a better future. Justice and rights, equality, and peace are now salient values needed to create enhanced community well-being. New practices in healthcare, education, gender relations and child protection are needed to end what they call bad habits and take up good habits.

Tostan’s Instructional Strategies

The chapter opens Tostan’s classroom doors by close examination of how participants described their learning experiences during class sessions. Participants appreciate that they are taught in their native language, Pulaar, so that all can understand. They find the curriculum engaging, frequently citing culturally relevant references, such as proverbs, songs, and examples from daily life. They say facilitators draw out their experiences and beliefs during discussions, intermixing new information presented in the sessions with what is familiar. Respondents speak about importance of facilitators’ questions for their learning and thinking anew about their communities’ practices. But what they find most engaging are the skits performed in class. Active learning skills increase over time and help them practice democratic citizenship skills that they use in expanded public settings.

Analysis: How Values Deliberations Lead to Community Empowerment

The chapter discusses categories that emerged from the 2010 and the 2011 data and from the three sensitizing concepts introduced earlier in the book—schema theory, capacity to aspire, and social norm theory—to explain the processes of individual and collective change. A new sensitizing concept, revision of self-schemas, is added. The change process begins with a self-sustaining status quo, which is perturbed by new and unsettling experiences of the participants in the class, to their reconsideration of local values and practices in a human rights framework, to the organized diffusion by participants of those unsettling and resettling experiences to communities beyond, and finally to adoption of beneficial individual and community changes. The authors support their claim that the process is empowering by linking their discussion to current thinking about empowerment.

Long-Term Program Results

The chapter contextualizes the study’s results by summarizing several independent evaluations of the processes and later outcomes of Tostan’s Community Empowerment Program (CEP) completed in other villages. These include evaluations by agencies such as UNICEF, Frontiers for Health (with the Population Council), Senegal’s Ministry of the Family and The Center for Research in Human Development. Generally, these studies’ findings parallel the processes and outcomes disclosed by Cislaghi, Gillespie, and Mackie’s study of the Kaolack communities. The other studies also suggest that the Kaolack communities can expect to realize more beneficial changes in later years of the program and after its departure, and that the changes tend to be stable. The authors also relate a qualitative study (master’s thesis) with very similar findings to theirs.

One-and-a-Half Years After the Democracy and Human Rights Sessions, 2011

The chapter analyzes 2011 interviews and focus groups and compares them to 2010 findings. In 2010 respondents report intentions to acquire beneficial practices; in 2011 they report successful efforts to acquire them. Respondents in 2011 describe remarkable changes, for example, increased school attendance, new health practices, and expanded roles for women. A new theme becomes apparent: changing self-understandings. New schemas of the self are woven into their descriptions of an expanding, inclusive public sphere; organized diffusion; and aligning community actions with their knowledge of human rights and responsibilities. In portrayals of community action, they identify their own and others’ new capacities and self-understandings, which enable them to create more just and caring practices. Revised self-schema through action emerges as a mechanism critical to the theory of change.