Sometimes you know when you have a made a relationship from which new things will grow and I sense that my relationship with BNU, thanks to Professor Hong and the students I met, will continue to grow.
Once in a while we have experiences that are so different from our normal day to day routines because we have inhabited a very different sort of cultural space. This was one of those experiences when I visited the Education Faculty of Beijing Normal University - the leading institution of education in China. Thanks to the generosity of Professor Hong and the university my wife and daughter were able to come with me. I gave two talks to postgraduate students at the Faculty's International Workshop on Large Scale Assessment and Institutional Evaluation. It gave me the chance to talk to students about lifewide learning and education and to gain their perspectives on what it meant to them in their lives and to its relevance for China. Through my conversations with students and faculty I formed a view that there is a lot of pressure on young people in China to perform well throughout their schooling, college and university and the style of teaching, learning and assessment demands a lot of discipline and compliance. Students have huge respect for their teachers but they are also taught to be dependent rather than independent learners. They seem to have little time for activities outside of the formal curriculum although undergraduate degrees have embraced the US liberal arts education model and include general education as well as their major subject. Nick and Huang I interviewed several students and although they recognised the relevance and importance of lifewide learning in their own lives they doubted whether lifewide education would be possible in Chinese universities. Firstly they thought that parents wanted their children to concentrate on getting good grades and notheing else mattered. Secondly they felt that faculty would resist and not want to put the effort in to change. They felt that pressure would have to come from employers saying that they wanted employees with the sorts of capabilities that require development through lifewide experiences. Our host Professor Hong Chegwen Turning to my own lifewide learning this week was very special. We were shown the meaning of hospitality. Our host Professor Hong Chegwen was so friendly, kind and generous with his words and his time. We dined with him almost every night. He is a most entertaining and funny host and we were introduced to the most amazing dishes. I can't remember experiencing so many different dishes in such a short space of time and the Chinese dining culture of continuously toasting each other and the wisdom gained through life. It is a very nice custom and toasting life and the people in our lives seems to fit very well with lifewide learning. Li Xiaoyan and Zheng Lingyu Throughout the week our wellbeing was cared for by two students - Li Xianoyan and Zheng Lingyu. We will never forget their friendliness and kindness and their generous gifts of their time and help in enabling us to see some of the many attractions of Beijing including the Forbidden City, Great Wall, Tian an Men Square and some of the Ho Hoi hutongs and markets. They guided and advised us with great care and attention always smiling and never tiring of answering our questions so that we could grow better meanings from our experiences. They acted as cultural interpreters and I could see how such people are essential to lifewide learning when you move into such unfamiliar cultural contexts. We are indebted to them for their help and we hope to be able to repay them in the future when they come to England. Sometimes you know when you have a made a relationship from which new things will grow and I sense that my relationship with BNU, thanks to Professor Hong and the students I met, will continue to grow.
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March 24 2013 This week saw the spring equinox although it still feels like the middle of winter especially with the icy blasts and snow on the ground. The equinox also means its the Iranian New Year or 'Nowruz' - its 1393 this year. Tradition says it dates back 15,000 years to before that last ice age when we transitioned from hunter gatherers to farmers. Nowruz begins with spring cleaning and the laying of the Hafseen - ancient symbolic representations. Here is our table.. Haft-Seen (Persian: هفتسین) or the seven 'S's is a traditional table setting of Nowruz, the traditional Iranian spring celebration. The haft seen table includes seven items all starting with the letter seen (س) in thePersian alphabet. Haft-Seen was originally called Haftchin (Haftĉin) derived from the words Chin (چین), meaning "gather; pile up"[1] and Haft (هفت), the number 7.[2] The Haft Chin table includes the following items which symbolize Zoroastrian yazatas or divinities such as ātar and asmān. 1. Mirror - symbolizing Sky 2. Apple - symbolizing Earth 3. Candles - symbolizing Fire 4. Golab - rose water symbolizing Water 5. Sabzeh - wheat, or barley sprouts symbolizing Plants 6. Goldfish - symbolizing Animals 7. Painted Eggs - symbolizing Humans and Fertility This week has been busy getting ready for China.. I had to make four trips to London to get our visas which I did not enjoy one bit. So much effort, resource and cost just to visit another country. I also put a lot of effort into getting my talks ready. They are much longer than I normally give so I had to create a lot more content than I usually include. But the time I have means I can I include a couple of videos and discussion points and I hope to be able to gain feedback from students on my ideas. I demonstrated to myself once again that preparing to give a talk is an important learning process. This time I have ended up with a much better appreciation of the theorists that lifewide learning can draw upon. Preparing for a talk and creating the resources to communicate sense making is a great way of learning. I updated my Beijing visit web page with the materials I developed. During this week I began to develop a better understanding of the concept of wellbeing by reading reports and articles I found through google searches as I began to find information for the next issue of Lifewide Magazine. Four incidents triggered emotional and empathetic responses and helped me develop a deeper understanding. The first involved my daughter.. I suddenly got a call saying my grandson had suddenly developed acute stomach ache at school and she had to take him (and the twins) to A&E. I immediately dropped everything and rushed over to A&E where I found my daughter trying to cope with two screaming babies and a sick child. I took the twins back home and looked after them for the next five hours while she stayed with my grandson at hospital. It turned out to be constipation but what I experienced was a good example of my own wellbeing connected in a deep way with the difficult experiences of my daughter and her family. The second incident was watching a news report on the troubles in Syria and seeing the children victims of the civil war. It made me think of the comfortable and secure life I and my family were living and what a different meaning wellbeing had in such circumstances. In my searches on wellbeing I found an excellent article written by the International Medical Core called a Improving the Wellbeing of Syrians in Za'arari refugee camp. How different their sense of wellbeing was to mine many having experienced and witnessed terrible violence including the loss of relatives and friends. The assessment showed that people in the camp were suffering from the camp environment (e.g. heat, dust, no electricity, unclean toilets), worry about friends and family in Syria, having nothing to do in the camp, safety concerns, and not being able to take care of their appearance (e.g. getting a haircut, clothes). The most common activities that helped men deal with stress were praying, seeking out time alone, talking and spending time with family and friends, going out, walking, and working. Most men were doing these activities in the camp except for talking with family and friends (due to being separated) and working. Activities that usually helped women were household chores, talking to family and friends, praying, walking, going to work, going out, sleeping, crying and smoking. However, none of the women reported being able to do chores, walk, go out, or work in the camp. Suggestions from people to improve the camp included electricity and lights, play areas and activities for children, having more and clean bathrooms and showers, fans, better medical care, distribution of items closer to tents, paving roads, changing tents to cara vans, being able to work, education for children, better food and cold water, clothes, small stoves to make tea and coffee, hats/sunblock, financial help, moving the camp and meeting spaces for camp residents. The report came up with a series of practical recommendations to improve the wellbeing and comfort of these refugees. The third incident involved bereavement in the family. My wife's auntie died in Iran and she made time to go and comfort another auntie before she flew to be with her family in Iran. It seemed to me that this was another example of how our individual wellbeing is intermingled with other family members and how we give each other support in times of need. Such acts give meaning to our sense of wellbeing by giving something (time, empathy, practical support) to others and enable the receivers to maintain their sense of being through the love and support being given. The fourth incident was also triggered by TV, this time the annual Comic Relief event which we watch as a family. There were many heart rending film clips of children in Africa starving or suffering from illnesses that are curable with the right medical treatment. Of course they are designed to disturb us, to shake us out of our comfort zone with the aim of making us give - and they do. This event raised over £70 million. But one clip brought home to me again that wellbeing was simply a matter of context.. being born to parents who were drug addicts meant that one man grew up without any sense of love, comfort and security in his life. And this was only a few miles away in London. How fortunate I was to be born into a family that loved and cared for me, and how fortunate my children and their children are to experience the same. We could all assume that our basic needs for security, food, comfortable home, love and affection, and a good education would be met and allow us to aspire to making the most of the opportunities we have in our fortunate circumstances with the support of family around us. It's been a very enjoyable and emotional weekend as our son and daughter came home from university to celebrate their mum's big birthday and Mothers Day. Having all the family together these days is a rarity so we all savoured it and had a lot of fun and lots of catch up conversations.. We were a complete family again each fulfilling our role within it and it felt good. It was fascinating to see how our son and daughter are growing up and becoming/being independent and this manifested itself on numerous occasions. In one conversation my daughter was discussing the possibility of travelling to Cambodia to work with an NGO.. her mum was not too keen but she suddenly said..'look you can advise me but I'm going to make the final decision on whether I go', I'd never heard that sort of thing before. I am just starting to think of wellbeing as a dimension of lifewide learning. My daughter has just started writing for her university newspaper so I have commissioned her to write an article for Lifewide Magazine (which she can also use for her newspaper) on how students understand their own wellbeing. I developed a simple questionnaire and interviewed her and her brother to pilot it. It worked a treat and we had good meaningful conversations. Both, in their individual ways, made the point that their wellbeing was not just about happiness or feeling good, but was much more about discovering, pursuing and achieving your purposes. Both indicated that trying to find your purpose and that they try to do this by taking on new things.. not at random, but guided by their interests, values and relationships. When I added my tags to the post I realised that this was the first time I'd had categorised a post using 'wellbeing' so it not a concept that comes in to my head very much. Perhaps the things I do and the relationships I have are so integrated into my wellbeing that I take it for granted. As a generalisation I do feel fulfilled and happy with my life. I am a valued member of a family that I am supporting and gaining much love in return. I enjoy my work which gives me challenge, interest and opportunity and a belief that what I'm doing is worthwhile. I latter completed the questionnaire myself and realised in doing so how much of my own sense of wellbeing was bound up with my family. Seeing them find and achieve their purposes, and playing a part in helping them do this, was perhaps the main source of my wellbeing. WELLBEING QUESTIONNAIRE 1 What does 'wellbeing' mean to you? I am very fortunate to have more than the basics in life including a lovely home and income to support my needs, time to do things I want to do and I am reasonably healthy and fit. These things all contribute to my sense of wellbeing. But ultimately wellbeing is about understanding and fulfilling my purposes - or at least the ones that I think are most important in my life. My wellbeing is founded on the relationships I have with the people who matter most to me. My immediate family which includes my three children by my first marriage and my wife and three children and grandchildren from my second marriage. My greatest sense of achievement and fulfillment comes from the love and attention they give me and my involvement in their lives. Seeing and helping them grow up and find their own ways in life has given me my main purpose in life. A second set of purposes which cause me to get up in the morning is my work in promoting lifewide education. Here fulfillment comes from a sense of making progress in achieving the educational goals I believe in. 2 Is wellbeing linked to happiness? Are they the same thing? Yes. I believe I am contented and happy with my circumstances and although things do crop up in life that make me anxious, sad and unhappy - the big picture is one of happiness. But wellbeing is not only about happiness it is much more about discovering and pursuing purposes and doing things that you believe are worthwhile, meaningful and valuable and deep and meaningful forming relationships. 3 Which aspects of you does your wellbeing involve or affect? Given what I have said it must affect me physically. Although I can no longer run because of my knee I am generally in good health and physically I can do most things that I need or want to do day to day. It affects me psychologically and emotionally - I generally feel positive and rarely suffer from negative feelings, and sadness can usually be offset with joy. Aspects of my daily life keep my mind active so it affects me intellectually. And spiritually, I am comfortable with my understanding of who I am, why I am here and what will happen to me when I die. 4 What sorts of things do you do that enable you to cultivate a sense of wellbeing? I am surrounded by my family and I am involved in their lives, some more than others. At the moment I am helping my daughter a couple of days a week with childcare - looking after her 8 month old twins. Its hard work but very rewarding and it gives me a lot of pleasure to feel I am giving her practical help and time to do other things in her life. Beyond this my wife and I do lots of things with and for the family both immediate and more extended and these experiences ground me in the life of others. I enjoy my work, and my writing it stimulates me intellectually and gives me the satisfaction of creating new things. I play in a band and have weekly rehearsals and that also gives me enjoyment and challenge. When time and weather permit I like to get out into my garden and do things in it. 5 Is your sense of wellbeing something that comes from doing one thing or many things? It comes from different things in different parts of my life - indeed having things happen and making things happen in different parts of my life enriches my sense of fulfillment and achievement. 6 What sort of things erode your sense of wellbeing? Please give examples Concerns and anxieties within the family have a big impact on my sense of wellbeing. For the most part these are small things that are all part and parcel of family living. But sometimes they are big. We have concerns that one of my daughter's premature twins might have brain damage because he stopped breathing when he was in the incubator. We watch intently for any developmental signs and it remains a concern that affects me emotionally. I also know that illness or injury has a negative impact. I damaged my knee playing badminton and discovered I also had arthritis and this has been painful, slows me down and inhibits me from doing anything really active like playing sport, jogging or long walks. Feeling overweight and slothful also makes me feel less good about myself. In the working side of my life feelings of not making progress or not achieving anything worthwhile erode my sense of wellbeing. 7 If you are unhappy about your state of wellbeing how do you change it? Can you give an example to illustrate? Improving wellbeing always involves recognising what is causing the problem and doing something about it. A few months ago I felt overweight and this combined with my knee problem was making me feel not so good. I found a diet and stuck to it and began to lose my bulging stomach. But some of the really big things in life.. like the loss of a partner.. are hard to do much about.. grief and sadness are always with you no matter what you do. In my case I found someone else to share my life with her and her family, and my children, helped me enormously to rebuild my life. 8 Is there a relationship between learning and developing and your sense of well being? Can you give an example to illustrate Yes. I am conscious that so much of day to day living involves learning and developing in order to accomplish something or help someone else. This LWE project aimed at exploring the idea of wellbeing and how it relates to lifewide learning is involving me in finding out what others think wellbeing involves through on-line searches, in devising an interview protocol (this set of questions) and using it to have structured conversations with people (beginning with family). I will also use the opportunity to develop new relationships with people. I am learning through this process, and this is one example of a continuous process of learning and developing. 9 Is there a relationship between wellbeing and achieving things that matter to you? If yes can you give an example? Yes. Trying to achieve something I have decided to do becomes a significant focus for me and engages me on all fronts. If I do not make progress or the outcomes from what I am doing are not so good it makes me dissatisfied and that usually involves me in trying harder or trying something else. In the context of trying to help members of my family - just getting feedback that shows that what I have done has been valued is sufficient to make me feel that what I have done has been useful and worthwhile. Example - it was my wife's big birthday recently and she did not want any fuss being made. My wife is Iranian and in her culture birthdays are not celebrated as an adult and she is quite anti-birthdays. But I thought it was important to mark the occasion and planned/plotted a family celebration with the children and the two older ones came home from university for the weekend. I searched for and found a Persian restaurant with music and dancing and invited other close members of the family. We had a lovely evening and my wife really enjoyed it and the whole weekend. The best moment was when she said she would have to revise her view of birthdays! On such occasions you can tell when what you have tried to do has proved worthwhile. 10 On a scale of 1-10 where 1 is least and 10 is most important.. How important are these things in creating your sense of wellbeing. 1 Connecting with and having good relationships with people I come into contact with everyday 10 2 Being healthy and fit....physically active - walking, sport, dancing etc 9 3 Being involved in the world - being curious and aware of the world around me - looking and finding new opportunities 9 4 Feeling creative - doing things that give me a chance to be creative, inventive or resourceful 8 5 Continually learning and developing myself 9 6 Doing new things that interest me 9 7 Making progress in the things I am doing 10 8 Doing things with and for other people 10 9 Having a close relationship with someone I trust and can discuss anything with 10 10 Feeling that I am valued by the people that matter to me 10 11 Being able to do the things I want or need to do 10 12 Achieving something that I think is worthwhile 10 11 Why are the things that you rate most highly very important to your wellbeing? All these things are important to my sense of wellbeing. Most of the things I rate highly are to do with relationships and affiliations. Perhaps I would add feeling loved as well as valued as being important, and feeling I am acting responsibly in fulfilling my role as a parent or friend. Perhaps implicit, but could be made explicit, is the need to belong to something - to be part of a family and by extension to be part of a community (lifewide education). The other feature about my sense of wellbeing is my need to achieve the things I value - the purposes that I have defined for myself. In this way it is intimately related to my lifewide learning and ongoing development as a person. 12 Is there anything that is important to you missing from the list? My sense of wellbeing is an integral to the way I feel about myself and the life I live. It is not a static thing.. It is continuously evolving and has to be sustained through the things I chose to do and the way I try to do them. Because it is influenced by many things it has to be viewed holistically and evolving. I did not mention spirituality but perhaps our sense of wellbeing is what nurtures our spirit that carries and sustains us on our journey through life. The sun is shining and spring is in the air and I just completed my bimonthly report in which I reflect on the progress we have made in the lifewide education enterprise. I circulated my report to the team to let them have my overview and invited them to add items that I don't know about. In this way we can all keep up to date. I also hope that the information will help convey a sense of achievement and pride. I suppose I am using it as both a tool for monitoring progress and a means of trying to keep people involved. All in all I feel we have made good progress in most of the areas we identified in our 2013 work plan. I gave myself a break to wander around the garden looking for signs of spring which I captured in some lovely photos. I noiiced that the pathway I had made in September now looked as if it had always been a part of the woods which looked as if they were j
Today we submitted our bid for HEA Funding to help introduce lifewide education at Southampton Solent University. Thanks to Georgina Andrews who has been brilliant in leading and coordinating the bid. She picked up my initial email enquiry as to whether there was potential in developing the idea, hosted two meetings to explore it and coordinated all the detail that was necessary to make it happen. I worked very closely with her to develop the bid and I learnt a lot in the process in terms of trying to connect the idealism of lifewide learning to the practicalities of university education. No idea as to whether it will be successful but I am optimistic that something will come of the investments we have made in formulating the bid and the deeper mutual understandings we have created in the process. As my last blog revealed I have just begun a regular commitment to look after my daughter's twins so she can start working again. Its hard work but wonderfully rewarding in being able to spend the time with them. Coincidentally I came across the 'Granddad Programme' in Sweden which raised my awareness of the importance of intergenerational learning and how grandparents can be connected to new social processes for educating young people in schools. I was a dad of three babies once (I still am a parent of older children/young adults) but I have never been a 'mum' before and I never had to look after two babies at once! Fortunately my daughter provides me with an excellent role model for how to look after and care for twins, she is totally dedicated to her children's wellbeing and development and I have leant much from watching her..But as I have been doing all the things that I needed to do to keep my grandsons safe, clean, well fed, contented and stimulated, I have been struck by the situational knowledge, capability and resilience it demands. These are things that have to be learnt through being involved but I was interested to come across this posting by Matthew Taylor on the idea that caring is a core capability and a disposition that we should be nurturing through our education system if we want a better society. His ideas align well with our concerns for a lifewide concept of education. Care as a core capabilityMatthew Taylor CEO at RSA There is a crisis of care in our country and it comes in many parts. For a start there just isn’t enough to go around; whether it’s deprived children or isolated elders, in our crowded society many people lack the human contact and support that they need to flourish. This is despite the fact – reported by the ONS – that one in ten people provide unpaid care, that the proportion is steadily rising and most quickly among those who provide more than fifty hours a week. Although the Coalition’s announcement of a new funding framework is welcome, regardless of who pays professional care is proving increasingly unaffordable. Virtually every local authority in England has now restricted state funded provision to those with the most severe needs, and even they get a threadbare offer. At a time when we need to maximise productive work, the expense of child care means UK employment rates among mothers are disappointing and much lower than many other European countries. And, as recurrent scandals in hospitals and care homes – of which Mid Staffordshire is the most recent and shocking – vividly illustrate, our institutions and professionals seem capable of ignoring the most basic care needs of their patients. Meanwhile recently another debate has reopened; what should children learn in schools? Michael Gove’s policy shift on the EBacc still leaves him out of line with a growing international consensus that schools should equip children not just with subject based knowledge but the core capabilities they will need to be successful and responsible citizens. Below the u-turn headlines last week was a surprise reprisal for citizenship education, which contrary to expectations will remain a statutory part of the curriculum, with renewed emphasis on active participation in community volunteering. This is an opportunity. It’s time we saw learning to provide care as essential to young people’s development.We learn about the joys, trials and tribulations of providing care in practice not in theory. Teaching care should revolve around a new ‘young people’s care experience’ through which all youngsters at some point between the ages of 14 and 18 are expected to undertake a hundred hours of work experience in a care setting such as a community nursery or a residential home. There would be many benefits. Young people would have an experience which has a good chance of being useful to them in their career and which – unlike a lot else they learn at schools – certainly of value at some point in their life. The care institutions would get a flow of prepared young people to enhance the offer they make, especially around the face to face interaction which so often seems to be missing when things go wrong at places like Mid Staffs. Having worked in Downing Street I am painfully aware that the implementation of an idea is as important as the idea itself. The devil is in the detail. I should thank my readers for some useful comments when I floated this idea last week and an insightful sixth form group at St Xavier’s college in Clapham who gave me forthright feedback when I recently floated the concept with them. The Government decided some time ago to scrap mandatory work experience for older secondary school pupils. This didn’t get much push back, partly because the low quality of many work placements has given the whole idea a bad name among teachers and young people. So this scheme must be linked to accredited classroom learning and to high standards of supervision and support by the care workplaces. Pupils must be prepared for the experience and if they meet the standard they must get credible accreditation to put on their CVs. And the participating organisations –which could be from the public, voluntary or private sector – should be strongly encouraged to reward young people who successfully deliver the 100 hours – some public recognition and £50 can go a long way if you’re fifteen. Perhaps as Carl Allen suggested we could make use of alternative currencies as the mode or reward. It is also vital that the scheme is mandatory across all schools whatever their social mix. One of the problems with paid caring occupations is their low status. Feminist economists argue it is part a broader problem of downgrading what is seen as ‘women’s work’. The care experience should be seen as an opportunity and a privilege for all not a burdensome imposition. And, incidentally, this is vital for our economy. For all the talk of investment in science and high tech business, improving the quality of work in our ‘high touch’ service sector is vital to the sustainability of public services and the overall productivity of the economy. The St Xavier’s students asked another question: Millions of young people are already care providers, looking after parents, grandparents or younger siblings. Isn’t it a bit much to ask them to add another 100 hours onto the several many spend every day looking after loved ones? It is a telling point and implementation has to leave room for schools to show common sense and compassion. But perhaps this is another upside. Far too often young carers lack the space or confidence to talk to their peer group about the challenges they face. By making care giving something we all value and all experience as part of growing up perhaps that too might change. With being a granddad sometimes comes the responsibility of childcare... I have done my fair share of 'baby sitting' but last week I started an ongoing one day a week commitment so my daughter could go back to work... The twins are now 8.5 months.. they are quite chunky but have yet to start moving around by themselves.. I knew it wasn't going to be easy.. so I was mentally prepared but my goodness looking after their every needs from 8am to 5pm and keeping them amused was full-on ... and my daughter does it day after day without ever complaining.. So I treated the job like any other job... my daughter had left me written instructions on feeding times and had left the food prepared so all I had to do was keep them safe and happy.. they were kind to me and somehow I got through the day okay and I was quite proud of myself.. our treat was to go shopping in Woking. It was funny walking along with all the mums pushing babies in push chairs.. Overall I think I coped reasonably well and I'm sure I'll get better at it. I also knew that my daughter needed to go back and do something intellectually stimulating and interact with other adults. She came home very happy and I knew I had done something that had made her life better. She has not had a break since they were born 10 weeks premature in May and I knew she saw going back to work as a break. Not surprisingly I fell asleep as soon as I sat down to watch TV!! We spend all of our lives becoming the person we are but rarely stand back and analyse what it entails at the level of our daily lives - preferring to see our growth as a mysterious phenomenon. I have discovered I get great benefit from producing things, usually with other people, that cause me to think about my own circumstances. The latest issue of Lifewide Magazine which I worked on with the editor Jenny Willis focuses on the question of how we become the person we want, need or ought to be. Our Magazine is our most important vehicle for exploring different dimensions of the phenomenon of lifewide learning and development and the process of 'making' involving searching for, commissioning and writing content, and commissioning illustrations and working with the artist always exposes me to new ideas and reshapes my understandings. This issue was particularly significant in this respect. So many of the articles reveal just how precious the chance we have is to use our life to become the person that we try to be so that at the end of our life we are thankful for being that person and have no regrets that we were not someone else. Of course life throws things at us or takes us in all sorts of directions which we would not ask for and this is the reality of what we have to work with. But we can and should be inspired by the people who, through their own actions, show us how to live a life of purpose and meaning that influences and benefits all around them. I had a fascinating and illuminating conversation with my daughter about how she thought she had become the person she is. She has clearly thought deeply about who she is and how she has become the person she is and what affects her day to day in being the person she wants to be. It was deeply personal and meaningful and I learnt so much from the conversation.
Travel certainly broadens the mind by opening your eyes to worlds that are very different to your own. I am in Riyadh attending the International Forum of Innovative University Teachers being held at the Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University. I lived in Saudi Arabia over 30 years ago and I was keen to see how it might have changed. I realised very quickly that some things never change as I sat clutching the seat (no seat belts), as my taxi driver remonstrated with an overtaking car at 50mph..on the drive from the airport!!!! The second thing that hadn't changed was the generosity and hospitality of my Saudi hosts who looked after me very well. The photo shows some of the many people, including students, who helped make the conference a success. I had been invited to give a talk on my study of change in a university (see below). I was worried that what I had to say about change and innovation in an English university would not translate into what seemed to me to be a very different culture of higher education. But when I asked this question I was told by the Dean of Development and a number of university teachers that they recognised the factors and conditions that were relevant to change and innovation in their universities. I was greatly relieved and also pleased that what I had discovered were some universal principles that might be applied to universities in any higher education system so that was important learning for me. I learnt that Saudi Arabia is growing its university system very quickly (someone said 26% of GDP was going into higher education). What was clear was that university teachers are grappling with the same issues in developing more engaging and relevant forms of learning as university teachers in the UK and elsewhere. The same sorts of topics were being covered - e-learning, e-portfolios and social networking, project based learning and problem based learning and many other progressive forms of learning activity. Amongst the many excellent contributions was a presentation given by a medical educator Dr Ammar Attar Umm al-Qura , who is pioneering a lifewide approach in the medical curriculum. (Students undertake a project of their choice that must relate to their personal interests and passions and then put on an exhibition for the benefit of staff and students. Students were motivated to produce books, films, poems and many different artefacts and through their creativity they connected their products to the medical disciplinary field. A great example of LWE in action. Dr Attar kindly agreed to join our community and represent LWE in the Kingdom. The one thing that felt very strange was the fact that men and women sat in different conference theatres that were linked through sound and projection.. Interestingly, the women could see us but we could not see them. It was my first experience of this form of segregation and it felt very strange though of course I respect that this is deeply cultural. I take home with me many happy memories and several new friendships that I hope will be continued. My presentation |
PurposeTo develop my understandings of how I learn and develop through all parts of my life by recording and reflecting on my own life as it happens. I have a rough plan but most of what I do emerges from the circumstances of my life
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