Learning communities, doctorates, and partnerships for development: a case study
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University of Canterbury. School of Teacher Education
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In the doctoral rooms in the faculty of education where the authors of this article are located there are more international students than domestic ones. One of the reasons is that domestic students tend to be practising teachers studying part-time and are located throughout the country. Another reason, and one that is significant for this discussion, is that increasing numbers of early to mid-career teachers, teacher educators and university lecturers from developing countries are seeking postgraduate qualifications from established western universities and those universities see them as a necessary source of revenue in an academic market where financial contribution margins are as important as scholarly achievement. An earlier publication by some of the current authors (Greenwood, Alam, & Kabir 2013) reported a case study of a Bangladeshi teacher development project in which the government of Bangladesh sent fourteen experienced teacher educators to a New Zealand university to complete a two-year research-based Masters of Education programme. It critically analysed the local and international context of the project, ways in which the study programme was successful and the areas in which it fell short. It constructed its analysis in terms of a concept of fair trade, and proposed that for an academic trade to be fair it needs to meet the needs of both parties. Specifically this entailed meeting the academic expectations of the host university and conducting research field work that addressed the needs of educational development in the home country in terms that were compatible with its material and cultural context. Our discussion in the earlier publication acknowledged that there was no single lens through which the home country would evaluate success. It argued that analysis of processes of development called for recognition of multiple perspectives which appreciate the complexity of the ways global monetarist influences and western epistemologies might be regarded, and might be useful, in shaping the direction of educational development. It further argued that the evolution of a fair exchange would involve the development of a partnership that would construct both partners as learners as well as agents of change. It suggested that for such a partnership to develop the relationship needed to be on-going and evolve over time. Here we report aspects of a second stage of the project. We examine the emergence of what we now more confidently call an academic partnership. We examine how that partnership developed beyond the period of the first Bangladeshi teacher development contract and the ways it is extending the original project’s research and wider learning agendas. We previously reported key challenges for creating a fair academic partnership: developing a student learning community, grounding research in local conditions, investigating the potential for and the process of change, seeking relevant epistemological frameworks, and achieving practical outcomes. In these terms we here discuss five initiatives: the development of a doctoral learning community, the publication of emergent research, and three new doctoral research projects. We, the authors, are directly involved in the project, the first author as an academic of the host university, the other three authors as doctoral students from Bangladesh who were involved in the initial Masters study contract. Our locatedness within the research is discussed in our explanation of our methodology below. We construct our examination in terms of participatory action research grounded in the following four questions. How can doctoral research be shaped to meet the needs of international students’ home contexts as well as contributing to international knowledge? How can the collective potential of the student group be tapped? What research and pedagogical methodologies are useful for exploring and supporting educational change? What value systems and approaches to knowledge underpin the work?