Three Caribbean conferences in Jamaica and Haiti, 2016

This article discusses the following conferences: 1. The Calabash Literary Festival, Jamaica: 3 -5 June 2016 - 2. The 41st Annual Conference of the Caribbean Studies Association (CSA), Haiti : 6-11 June 2016 - 3. Geography Anniversary Conference celebrating 50 years of the Geography Department at the University of the West Indies (UWI): 27 June – 1 July 2016The Caribbean region regularly engenders and hosts intellectually stimulating educational and cultural events. In a visit this year to Jamaica, my country of origin, I experienced three of these events in June and July. It struck me that each had a richly postcolonial element of challenging negative legacies of colonialism, which have often solidified into current norms such as insufficiently tackling intellectual exclusion, neglecting material local problems, and downplaying or ignoring local achievement and culture. I reflect below on how the conferences contributed to countering such problems and establishing creative practices in intellectual culture.peer-reviewe

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This article contains academic reports by various scholars on "Learning with Adults: A Critical Pedagogical Introduction" by Leona M. English and Peter Mayo which won the 2013 Cyril O. Houle Award For ‘Outstanding Literature in Adult Education’ given by the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education (AAACE). It also gives a brief overview of issues which will be discussed further in the next issue (Volume 3 No. 1) of Postcolonial Directions in Education. A few of the topics which will be discussed are The Landless Workers Movement and the politics of doing research with and about social movements in Brazil and India.peer-reviewe

Biennial Conference of the Australian Association for Caribbean Studies

The 12th conference of the Australian Association for Caribbean Studies (AACS) was hosted by the Australian National University in Canberra, from 9th to 11th February, 2017. The conference does not focus on education, but I am reporting on it in this journal because of the postcolonial ethos that characterises the meeting. It is an example of a gathering that investigates, discusses and celebrates the culture and society of the Caribbean as a postcolonial region.peer-reviewe

'International education : emergences and future possibilities'. Report on a University of Fribourg workshop, 4-7 May, 2015.

An exploratory workshop with the theme: ‘International Education: Emergences and Future Possibilities’, was held at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland from 4-7 May 2015. The workshop, organised by the university’s Department of Educational Sciences, was made possible when the head of department Professor Edgar Forster and lecturer/PhD candidate Ms. Rose Eder applied for and won a grant of 24,810 CHF (Swiss Francs) from the Swiss National Science Foundation. Participants in the workshop included a number of invited global scholars of international education from universities in Canada, the USA, Brazil, Australia, Singapore, Japan and Vietnam, as well as graduate students in Education and their supervisors from the University of Fribourg, some from the transdisciplinary postdoctoral program ‘Migration and Postcoloniality meet Switzerland’.peer-reviewe

'For the socially responsible university'. Reflections on Universidad 2014, Cuba's 9th international higher education congress, in Havana, Cuba, 10-14 February 2014

Abstract in Portuguese by Anne Hickling-Hudson included.Every other year Cuba holds a conference on Higher Education. It attracts thousands of academics and other educators from Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking countries, and it also brings together representatives of all Cuban tertiary institutions, including those affiliated with different ministries. The theme for the 2014 conference, ‘For the Socially Responsible University’, was refreshingly welcome in an age when many universities are becoming increasingly corporatized seekers of profitable ventures and high student fees. The closing ceremony of the conference summed up the importance of the week of academic and cultural exchange. Cuba’s 1st Vice Minister for Higher Education, Dr. Jose Ramon Saborido, reminded delegates of the key role of the university in changing the status quo by providing valuable knowledge throughout society.peer-reviewe

Gender equality and girls education: Investigating frameworks, disjunctures and meanings of quality education

The article draws on qualitative educational research across a diversity of low-income countries to examine the gendered inequalities in education as complex, multi-faceted and situated rather than a series of barriers to be overcome through linear input–output processes focused on isolated dimensions of quality. It argues that frameworks for thinking about educational quality often result in analyses of gender inequalities that are fragmented and incomplete. However, by considering education quality more broadly as a terrain of quality it investigates questions of educational transitions, teacher supply and community participation, and develops understandings of how education is experienced by learners and teachers in their gendered lives and their teaching practices. By taking an approach based on theories of human development the article identifies dynamics of power underpinning gender inequalities in the literature and played out in diverse contexts and influenced by social, cultural and historical contexts. The review and discussion indicate that attaining gender equitable quality education requires recognition and understanding of the ways in which inequalities intersect and interrelate in order to seek out multi-faceted strategies that address not only different dimensions of girls’ and women’s lives, but understand gendered relationships and structurally entrenched inequalities between women and men, girls and boys

The potential of a mobile group blog to support cultural learning among overseas students

We explored the use of mobile social software, in the form of a mobile group blog, to assist cultural learning. The potential of using this technology for cultural adaptation among overseas students was examined as those students adapted to the everyday life of studying abroad. Two pilot studies and a successful field study of a mobile group blog as used by UK overseas students are reported. A further study with prospective overseas students witnessing this ‘moblogging’ in China revealed the advantages of communicating through this technology as a form of peer-supported preparation for cultural adaptation. Potential advantages for learning a second language via this system, were highlighted as communication was interweaved with cultural adaptation and exercised in the blog entries. Given mobile internet, the language experience together with cultural observation impressively supported these students' growing confidence with time, space and imagination