Philip M. Bamber

Transformative Learning through Service-Learning: No Passport Required.

Purpose – This paper aims to explore student learning within a local service‐learning initiative that forms part of an Education Studies undergraduate programme at an HEI in the UK with a history of international service‐learning programmes.Design/methodology/approach – This paper outlines the context for this form of community engagement in the UK and reflects on the experiences of student participants and the nature of their learning. Ethnographic research into the student experience of international service‐learning (ISL) provides a useful framework for this study.Findings – This research draws on transformational learning theory to describe how students experience a shifting of their world‐view through service‐learning locally. It reveals that challenges to stereotypes and personal values, as well as other previously accepted presuppositions, in a domestic context, are not dissimilar from those experienced by students involved in international service‐learning initiatives.Research limitations/implicat...

Towards an ethical ecology of international service learning

International Service-Learning (ISL) is a pedagogical activity that seeks to blend student learning with community engagement overseas and the development of a more just society. ISL programmes have grown as educational institutions and non-governmental organizations have sought to achieve the goal of developing ‘global citizens’. However, Service Learning (SL) in general and International Service-Learning (ISL) in particular remain deeply under-theorized. These educational initiatives provide policy-makers with a practical response to their quest for a ‘Big Society’ and present alluring pedagogical approaches for Universities as they react to reforms in Higher Education and seek to enhance both the student learning experience and graduate employability. After outlining the development of ISL in policy and practice, this paper draws on the rich tradition of ISL at one British university to argue that ISL is a form of engagement that has the potential to be ethical in character, although a number of factors are identified that militate against this. The contention is that ISL which promotes rational and instrumental learning represents a deficit model and, therefore, ISL is conceptualized here as a transformative learning experience that evinces distinctly aesthetic and even spiritual dimensions. Upon this theoretical groundwork is laid the foundations for conceptualizing ISL in ways that ensure its ethical integrity.

Global citizens: Who are they?

A growing desire to instigate global citizenship programmes in higher education has led to the development of optional structured opportunities for students to engage in prosocial activities. One of the challenges facing such programmes is to demonstrate and plan for the personal growth of those students. This article reports the dispositional, prosocial and attitudinal characteristics; knowledge and skills; and perceptions of social justice that students who undertake these activities bring to their initial participation. The findings indicate, that in comparison to a control group, the students differ significantly in a number of important ways (for example, conscientiousness, extraversion, openness; Machiavellianism, prosocial behaviour; self-esteem; skills relating to social action and tolerance and understanding and their concern regarding social problems). However, consideration should be given to the ways in which those students can be developed within a framework for social justice. Further, recruitment procedures for citizenship programmes in general should encourage the participation of a more diverse group of students than currently appears to be the case.

Becoming Other-Wise: Transforming International Service-Learning through Nurturing Cosmopolitanism.

This article explores the potential of pedagogical approaches such as International Service-Learning (ISL) to cultivate a cosmopolitan orientation. Founded upon the premise that conceptualisations of transformative learning must be expanded upon to account for the interaction and balance between epistemological and ontological aspects of learning, it seeks to illuminate the barriers that inhibit the transformative nature of such experiences. A group of conditions, processes, and resultant dispositions for cosmopolitan learning are identified as being particularly useful for interpreting the ongoing experience of ISL for 27 students across a range of locations. This framework is exemplified here to develop an understanding of cosmopolitan learning as a transformative process of becoming other-wise: A form of engagement that is fundamentally holistic and relational with a distinct moral dimension. Although ISL has the potential to nurture cosmopolitanism, evidence is presented of a number of factors that tend to militate against this.

(Dis-) Locating the transformative dimension of global citizenship education

Abstract Despite a groundswell of evidence for transformative education, manifestos for ‘transformative pedagogy for global citizenship’ remain under-theorized and pay limited attention to implications for practice. This paper connects theory and practice through analyzing a curriculum development project that sought to produce a framework for ‘engaged global citizens’. It considers the political and philosophical framings of the self and other, citizen and world, that underlie this empirical work, especially with reference to reflexivity, hermeneutics, democratic engagement and co-production. The resultant pedagogical framework, based upon concepts of transformative learning, attempted to undercut the homogenizing tendencies within global citizenship education (GCE). This discussion highlights the tensions and reifying effects of educational frameworks such as the Teaching Excellence Framework in the UK and the proposed framework for ‘global competence’ in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment. Evidence is presented that frameworks which attempt to make explicit educational phenomena and processes are overdetermined by efficacy and metrics that become perverse ends in themselves. While the anticipated project output here was the framework itself, the substantive output was, in fact, practical: namely the ongoing deliberation and reflection upon the discourses that both do and undo the task of locating the transformative dimension of GCE.

A Comparative Review of Policy and Practice for Education for Sustainable Development/Education for Global Citizenship (ESD/GC) in Teacher Education across the Four Nations of the UK.

The early 21st century has seen a period of extreme turbulence in education at all levels in the UK. Although education policy was administrated on a territorial basis before 1999, the 1998–1999 devolution settlement has amplified the complexity of education policy and practice across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Through a comparative review of teacher education across the four nations, this article will highlight aspects of divergence and convergence of policy and practice with a particular focus on education for sustainable development/education for global citizenship (ESD/GC). The implications for ESD/GC will be considered in relation to statutory teaching standards/competencies, values and ideologies, curriculum and pedagogy, and the role of the third sector. This discussion will identify opportunities and challenges facing ESD/GC in teacher education across the four nations.

“Hello Central, Give Me Doctor Jazz”: Auto/Ethnographic Improvisation as Educational Event in Doctoral Supervision:

Through exchanges within a doctoral supervision, the authors explore a range of dilemmas and challenges for reflexive inquiry. These include the problematic business of naming, the impossibility of objective separation of self from research, the merging of researcher subjectivities, and differences between performance and performativity. We note the educational potential in what can conventionally be considered “unprofessional” approaches to qualitative inquiry: neologisms, personal experience, stories, conversations, music, poetry, paintings, and film. We engage in reflexive interactions with each other and with such “data.” This was undertaken in the spirit of jazz improvisation—an unrehearsed performance—something that “happened,” an unplanned educational event but also an agency enabled by structure.

Educating Global Britain: Perils and possibilities promoting ‘National’ values through critical Global Citizenship Education

ABSTRACT Global citizenship education (GCE) within schools in England is increasingly being reoriented to address a statutory duty to promote fundamental British values (FBV). This multi-method study investigates the influence of critical GCE within initial teacher education in reshaping awareness, understanding and disposition towards FBV amongst beginning teachers. Findings highlight a tension between growing confidence and understanding of how to implement the FBV agenda and the development of autonomous dispositions of the kind demanded for the practice of critical GCE. Four teacher orientations towards FBV are developed and explored, demonstrating the role of practice-based learning for the cultivation of critical dispositions.