From Assistencialism to Equality? Perceptions of the Global South in Primary School Classrooms: An Action Research Project
Author(s):
Barbara O'Toole (presenting / submitting) Paula Murphy (presenting) Elaine Haverty
Conference:
ECER 2017
Network:
07. Social Justice and Intercultural Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

07 SES 07 A, Innovative Global Projects

Paper Session

Time:
2017-08-23
17:15-18:45
Room:
W3.09
Chair:
Dana Moree

Contribution

Question: Can teaching a trade and business module in primary schools, based on critical development education, help to address assistencialism?

Objectives: This study explores the impact of a ‘critical’ development education module on the perspectives of 84 students in Ireland in 5th and 6th class (11-12 years old) towards the Global South.

Although the study is located in Ireland, it has implications for schools across Europe and is particularly relevant at a time of high migration into Europe from certain African countries.  

 

Theoretical framework: Assistencialism is a concept introduced by Paulo Freire (1973) in his seminal work, Education: The Practice of Freedom. Freire described assistencialism as “policies of financial or social assistance which attack symptoms, but not causes, of social ills”, and which “offers no responsibility, no opportunity to make decisions, but only gestures and attitudes which encourage passivity (Freire, 1973, p. 16)”.  

‘Critical’ development education and critical literacy aim to counter assistencialism through challenging assumptions, perceptions and representations, through examining power relationships, and by shifting the focus away from Eurocentric dominance of educational discourse. These more radical ‘educations’ aim to challenge the idea “that meaning is objective and self-evident (Andreotti, 2014, p. 13-14)” and to investigate how educators in the Global North, are “inextricably implicated in various conjunctions of power (Jefferess, 2012, p. 25)”. Key writers in the field include Andreotti (2014, 2015), Bryan (2011, 2012), Bryan and Bracken (2011), Bourn (2011), Jefferess (2012), Tallon and McGregor (2014), and Gaynor (2016).

Studies have indicated that despite decades of development education, the ‘3 Fs approach’, as in, ‘fundraising, fasting, and having fun’ (Bryan & Bracken, 2011) continues to be the predominant response to matters of global inequality in classrooms in Ireland. A survey carried out in Ireland in 2013 of 1,000 higher education students (Suas, 2013) indicates the pervasiveness of assistencialism. For example, when asked about the effectiveness of different activities in ‘developing’ countries, “sending out skilled people to share expertise” was deemed to be the most effective action to take by 82% of the sample. Survey responses indicated “an individualised, apolitical approach to activism with an emphasis on volunteering (a charity model) and consumerism as a way out of poverty (Gaynor, 2016, p. 87)”. These kinds of responses reflect the persistence of views of the Global South as “inferior, underdeveloped, uncivilised, traditional, living in the past and dependent on aid, knowledge, rights and education handouts (Andreotti, 2015, p. 196)”. Such perceptions and responses are not unique to Ireland; research carried out by Tallon and McGregor (2014) in New Zealand indicated that discussions with students about development issues “often took on a paternalistic tone (2014, p. 1415)”. Indeed, Simpson (2004) notes that such paternalism often manifests in short-term volunteer programmes which are “rooted in a concept of a ‘third world’, where there is ‘need’, and where European young people have the ability, and right, to meet this need (2004, p. 682)”.

This study aimed to introduce a dimension of political education and critical literacy into development education at primary school level. It aimed to counter the increased ‘de-clawing’ of development education (Bryan, 2011) and return it to its Freirean roots (Tallon & McGregor, 2014), and then to assess the impact of this work on students’ views.

Method

Methodology was one of collaborative inquiry (Ntelioglu, Fannin, Montanera and Cummins, 2014), specifically, practitioner inquiry (Cochran-Smith and Donnell, 2006) using action research followed by thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The work had several stages. First, the lead researcher commissioned the design of trade-focused teaching materials appropriate to primary level to examine everyday connections between Ireland and developing countries through trade, thereby promoting a view of African countries as equal trading and economic partners. The design team comprised two writers, two representatives from a development non-governmental organisation (Proudly Made in Africa), and the lead researcher. Seven potential researchers were contacted by means of purposive sampling (Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 2011) in order to access ‘knowledgeable people’, as in “those with in-depth knowledge about particular issues” (Cohen et al, 2011, p. 157), which in this case was teachers with a background in social justice education. Cochran-Smith and Donnell (2006, p. 508) state that “having the practitioner take on the role of researcher contrasts with conventional research on teaching and teacher education where practitioners are the subject of study”. Of these seven teachers, four gathered data for analysis through teaching the material over 4-6 weeks in May / June 2016. Two teachers withdrew at the start of the analysis but consented to their data remaining in the project. Analysis was therefore carried out by a team of three: the remaining two practitioner researchers and lead researcher. It was based on data collected from 84 students across four schools. Data were gathered through auditing activities adapted from Reading International Solidarity Centre (RISC, 2015), implemented at baseline, mid-line, end-line. Researchers thus made comparisons in students’ knowledge and attitudes at critical junctures. Researchers also gathered data through classroom observations. The observation schedule was adapted from Merriam (2009) and used by all researchers in order to create consistency. Observation schedules were supplemented with field notes (Merriam, 2009; Denscombe 2014). Preliminary manual open coding was carried out by two researchers: the lead researcher and one other practitioner researcher. This was done independently and separately. The outcome was analysed by all three researchers to determine whether or not sufficient evidence existed to support the generation of themes and to agree upon themes. Data then underwent secondary interpretive coding. Initial analysis is completed, using thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke (2006) with support of NVivo. Final coding and analysis will now be undertaken.

Expected Outcomes

Students’ perceptions of Africa in baseline activities largely centred on the ‘natural’ environment: landscape, plants, animals, climate etc. Perceptions of differences as ‘deficit’ were common: e.g. poverty, poor housing, lack of water, illness. Knowledge of African geography, culture and history was generally restricted to information about Egypt: e.g. pharaohs, tombs, Tutankhamen. Such ‘exoticisation’ of Africa and lack of broader knowledge about African countries persisted to some extent to endline data, despite the fact that lessons focused on challenging assumptions and interrogating stereotypes. Persistence of deficit perceptions was particularly evident in activities based on images. Students’ perception of people as active agents in their own lives rather than as passive recipients of aid increased to some extent from baseline to endline. Similarly, students’ increased understanding of the impact of trade laws on livelihood was evident, as was students’ knowledge about specific products and brands produced in Africa. There was evidence of greater engagement with terminology relevant to trade, such as Fairtrade, minimum wage, import, export, manufacturing, and so on, with students relating these concepts and terms to African communities that they might have hitherto seen purely in deficit terms and as recipients of aid. Overall, data analysis reveals some degree of change in students’ attitudes and knowledge over the course of the module. However, preliminary study conclusions point to the persistence and deep-rootedness of assistencialist views despite a targeted intervention. Recommendations include the need for systematic and longer term critical development education interventions in primary schools. Wider implications for teacher education will also be examined in the paper.

References

Andreotti, V. (2014). Critical Literacy: Theories and practices in development education. Policy & Practice: A Development Education Review, 19, pp. 12-32. Andreotti, V. (2015). Postcolonial Perspectives in Research on Higher Education for Sustainable Development. Taylor and Francis Handbook of Higher Education for Sustainable Development, pp. 194-206. Bourn, D. (2011). Discourses and practices around development education: From learning about development to critical global pedagogy. Policy & Practice: A Development Education Review, pp.1-29. Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), pp. 77-101. Bryan, A. and Bracken, M. (2011). Learning to read the world? Teaching and learning about global citizenship and international development in post-primary schools. Dublin: Irish Aid. Bryan, A. (2011). Another cog in the anti-politics machine? The de-clawing of development education. Policy & Practice: A Development Education Review, pp.1-14. Cochran-Smith, M. and Donnell, K. (2006). Practitioner Inquiry: Blurring the Boundaries of Research and Practice. In J.L. Green, G. Camilli and P.Elmore (eds.) Handbook of Complementary Methods in Education Research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum for AERA. Cohen, L., Manion, L. and Morrison, K. (2011). Research Methods in Education. 7th edition. London and NY: Routledge. Denscombe, M. (2014). The Good Research Guide. (5th edition). Berkshire and NY: McGraw Hill. Freire, P. (1973). Education: The Practice of Freedom. London: Writers’ and Readers’ Publishing Cooperative. Gaynor, N. (2016). Shopping to save the world? Reclaiming global citizenship within Irish universities. Irish Journal of Sociology, 24(1), pp. 78-101. http://dx.doi.org/10.7227/IJS.0003 Jefferess, D. (2012). The “Me to We” social enterprise: Global education as a lifestyle brand. Critical Literacy: Theories and Practices, 6(1), pp. 18-30. Merriam, S.B. (2009). Qualitative Research. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Ntelioglu, B. Y., Fannin, J., Montanera, M. and Cummins, J. (2014) A multilingual and multimodal approach to literacy teaching and learning in urban education: a collaborative inquiry project in an inner city elementary school. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, Article 533. doi.10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00533 Reading International Solidarity Centre. (2015). How do we know it’s working? Tracking changes in pupils’ attitudes. Reading: RISC. Simpson, K. (2004). ‘Doing Development’: The gap year, volunteer-tourists and a popular practice of development education. Journal of International Development, 16, pp.681-692. Suas (2013). National Survey of Third Level Students on Global Development Report. Dublin. Retrieved from http://www.suas.ie/sites/default/files/documents/Suas_National_Survey_2013.pdf Tallon, R. and McGregor, A. (2014). Pitying the Third World: towards more progressive emotional responses to development education in schools. Third World Quarterly, 35(8), http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2014.946259

Author Information

Barbara O'Toole (presenting / submitting)
Marino Institute of Education
Dublin 9
Paula Murphy (presenting)
Marino Institute of Education
Dublin 9
Elaine Haverty
Marino Institute of Edcation
Intercultural
Dublin

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