Session Information
32 SES 14, Quality Education & UN Sustainable Development Goal 4: Inter-Country Dialogues about Enactment
Symposium
Contribution
Both Bangladesh and Malaysia are signatory of the United Nations (2018) Sustainable Development Goals. This endorsement from both the governments creates a commitment for exploring wise, prudent and ethical action for enactment of SDG-4. While the statement of SDG-4 “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” seems simple and attractive, it carries questions and provokes examination for organisational action. The writers understand sustainability in terms of continuation of life with greater sensibility towards environment and ecosystem. Thus SDG-4 invites investigation of whether existing teacher training practices are capable of promoting lifelong learning opportunities. We recognize that lifelong learning is itself a pedagogical concept with high level abstractions and involves process. We, researchers from two different countries and working within two different educational organisations, both want to bring teacher educators’ perspectives of lifelong learning in the forefront of our dialogue (Westoby & Morris,2011), as well as actively participate in the dialogue ourselves (Alam, 2015; Mohd Nawi, 2014). Therefore, this paper aims to report the significant outcomes of our collaborative project based on the question: how can teacher educators of Bangladesh and Malaysia shape their training practices so that they can work around teachers’ agency? This research question has two embedded aspects. One is how teacher educators perceive their role and agency to transform their existing training practices. Another is how they can enable trainee teachers to develop and propose a working model for promoting lifelong learning opportunities in classroom context. The conceptual framework of our collaborative project is based on understanding the theoretical principles of teachers and teacher educators’ self-development processes and procedures (Alam, 2016) and also the principles of participatory action research (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005). Our own understandings of these principles highlights engagement, reflection and practical action to transform existing practices. The broad methodological framework of our collaborative project falls under qualitative research. Our approach is one of case study where we utilize the processes and principles of participatory action research (Zuber-Skerritt, 1993). The methodological intent is to create dialogue, reflect and propose a working model for promoting lifelong learning opportunities in classroom contexts (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008). Thus we want to bring the diversity of viewpoints from two specific contexts. The significant planned outcome of our collaborative project is to explore the embedded discourses of lifelong learning and to create a transnational dialogue for ethical action to promoting lifelong learning opportunities.
References
Alam, M. S. (2016). Teachers, collaboration, praxis: A case study of a participatory action research project in a rural school of Bangladesh. (Doctoral thesis). University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. Mohd Nawi, A. (2014). Applied Drama in English Language Learning (Doctoral thesis). University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. Kemmis , S., & McTaggart, R. (2005). Participatory Action Research: Communicative action and the public sphere. In N. K. Denzin, & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.). pp. 559-603, The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage. Kemmis, S., & Grootenboer, P. (2008). Situating praxis in practice: Practice architectures and the cultural, social, and material conditions for practice. In S. Kemmis, & T. J. Smith (Eds.), Enabling praxis: Challenges for education (pp.37-62). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. United Nation. (2018) The Sustainable Development Goals Report. https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/files/report/2018/thesustainabledevelopmentgoalsreport2018.pdf Westoby, P., & Morris, K. (2011). ‘Community as dialogue’ and ‘dialogical community development’ with(in) schools. In D. Bottrell, & S. Goodwin (Eds.), Schools, Communities and Social Inclusion (pp. 140-154). South Yarra, Malaysia: Palgrave Macmillan. Zuber-Skerritt, O. (1993). Improving learning and teaching through action learning and action research. Higher Education Research and Development, 12 (1), 45-58.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.