Working for change in India’s civil society

This article discusses the working life of a NGO worker in Kerala, South India who researches, advocates and campaigns for the rights of India’s most vulnerable communities. It draws on the personal narrative of an individual, to explore the ways in which his life chances and experience of working in a professionalizing civil society context have allowed him to construct his own notions of activism and work. This article engages with his life history to understand why he has made the decisions about how he and his staff work to tackle issues of injustice, inequality and exploitation. It analyses notions of activism, work and life history in a context shaped by class, gender and caste divisions

Recasting professionalisation: Understanding self-legitimating professionalisation as a precursor to neoliberal professionalisation

This article explores the complex ways in which development NGOs become professional development actors. It offers a uniquely holistic understanding of professionalisation that draws on extensive new research data. It challenges the accepted narrative, presented by development scholars, of neoliberalism as the fundamental driver of professionalisation. Instead, it offers a more nuanced theorisation that recognises that professionalisation from outside, driven by neoliberalism, is often preceded by a professionalisation from within. Here the paper develops the concept of self-legitimising professionalisation as part of a ‘two stage process’ through a case study of international development practice delivered by UK based development education actors

International Reflections on the Challenges of Entrepreneurial Education Working with Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

With the European Council looking to Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to help support the strategic goal of increasing small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) activity through increased entrepreneurial education, we reflect on the challenges facing both HEIs and SMEs through the lens of the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 funded research and innovation staff exchange project ‘Global Entrepreneurial Talent Management 3’ (GETM3). This research generated data during the three-year duration of the project and through a mixed-methods approach. The effectiveness of entrepreneurial education against this strategic requirement and the barriers which need to be overcome to achieve it are considered. We observed that common ground between academia and SMEs is favoured where partnerships are interactive, agile and flexible. We finalise this paper by offering a series of recommendations and guidelines to help HEIs work more closely together to fuel further entrepreneurial activity

Sustainable international engagement using a partner co-hosted teaching model

Internationalisation is a significant activity of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) worldwide and is typically embedded within the aims, ambitions, vision, and strategy of the institution. It incorporates the policies and procedures required to facilitate participation within a global academic environment, [1] and is often considered to be a transformative process that impacts practices in teaching and learning, research, and administration. With formal protocols to establish partnerships, such as memoranda of understanding and articulation agreements, the business of formally creating international partnerships is well defined. However, the motivations, corresponding metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) of successful partnerships are not as well defined. At the institute level, there are often KPIs to measure student mobility, revenue generation, and funding. But internationalisation strategies also often include social, political and academic output and can be an important source of inspiration for wider innovation and entrepreneurial activity. In Ireland, for example, objective 2 of the 2018-2020 Higher Education System Performance Framework [2] includes the strategic goals of increasing international student numbers, increasing the foreign language provision for Irish students, and increasing the number of academic publications with international peers. The issue facing HEIs is not that international partnerships cannot be created, it is that many such partnerships do not evolve, often fail to develop into meaningful long-term relationships, and do not adequately contribute to the underlying strategic goals of participating partners. These failures are attributed to the fact that, while support exists at a higher institute level, there is often a lack of buy-in and support at the faculty level, including language barriers, a lack of ongoing post-agreement communication, and cultural issues creating inertia in the relationship [3]. While English is seen as the global language of science [4], it often puts at least one of the partners at a disadvantage if they are not natively proficient. Even when this barrier can be overcome, cultural differences can also contribute to unsustainable relationships [5]. While faculties, and individuals within them, are ultimately the engines that drive the KPI activities of university strategic goals, research has shown that it is frequently through the building of friendships and the discovery of common interests between staff that is the key to developing sustainable partnerships [6]. Brockington [7] calls for a clear vision which is embraced by all stakeholders including faculty, administration and senior institution management, and that appropriate financial and international support models must be put in place to help nurture productive international partnerships. HEIs typically create significant numbers of partnerships with other international institutions. However, many of these simply fail to become active for the reasons already outlined. The hope would seem that simply increasing the quantity of partnerships will ultimately result in the desired level of activity. However, in this paper, we argue that a more nuanced understanding of the ecosystem is required to foster successful partnerships and to increase the productivity rate of these relationships. While there may not be a single model that addresses all issues given their dynamic nature and number of stakeholders required to make a partnership successful, a set of best practices and guidelines can be extracted based on examples of key partnerships that have been successful. In this paper we describe a successful and ongoing partnership between TU Dublin School of Computer Science and the Beijing University of Chemical Technology (BUCT) College of Information Science and Technology. The model presented in this paper, Partner Co-hosted Model (PCM), evolved over many years and is based on a mutual desire to build meaningful and sustainable joint academic activity between the two institutions. This model has continued to evolve to sustain an ongoing cooperation and meaningful partnership and has demonstrated both its resilience and utility during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the following section, we review the context and background to the development of this model. In section three, we introduce the model and describe in detail its core features. Section four offers a summary of our conclusions and considers the possibility for further development of models of international partnerships as well as possible future research opportunities. This paper draws on the experiences and reflections of the programme team, including TU Dublin and BUCT staff members. As this programme has undergone a real time process of change and development, the lead authors have been able to reflect on (a) the changing nature of the programme, (b) the value of the programme to individual and institutional stakeholders, (c) the strengths and limitations of the model as it has involved and (d) and the experiences of dealing with the day-today challenges of international working. What is core to this discussion, is a recognition that running international programmes and partnership is only possible through clear, direct and ongoing dialogue (as this paper will address) but also a recognition that processes and experiences are inherently nonlinear and at times, as all authors here attest, challenging and ‘messy’. All authors recognise that the development of this programme has required the involvement of a range of colleagues, both at TU Dublin and BUCT, from departments including finance, teaching excellence, marketing, international and technology learning specialists

International Reflections on the Challenges of Entrepreneurial Education Working with Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

With the European Council looking to Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to help support the strategic goal of increasing small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) activity through increased entrepreneurial education, we reflect on the challenges facing both HEIs and SMEs through the lens of the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 funded research and innovation staff exchange project ‘Global Entrepreneurial Talent Management 3’ (GETM3). This research generated data during the three-year duration of the project and through a mixed-methods approach. The effectiveness of entrepreneurial education against this strategic requirement and the barriers which need to be overcome to achieve it are considered. We observed that common ground between academia and SMEs is favoured where partnerships are interactive, agile and flexible. We finalise this paper by offering a series of recommendations and guidelines to help HEIs work more closely together to fuel further entrepreneurial activity

Metamodern sensibilities: Toward a pedagogical framework for a wicked world

This paper identifies the need for a pedagogical re-orientation in UK higher education to prepare graduates to overcome wicked problems. In addition to key knowledge sets, graduates need attributes of critical self-reflection, risk-awareness and management, collaboration, creativity, agility, reflexivity – enabling the ability to manage the unknown.In response, researchers have acknowledged the importance of pedagogies that are risk-oriented, creative, and reflective to remedy modernist banking methods. This paper acknowledges that while such pedagogies are underutilized, an antagonistic dichotomy between modernist banking methods (bad) and enquiry and risk-oriented approaches (good) is unhelpful as both approaches are necessary.This paper develops a metamodern framework to guide pedagogic practices to facilitate a disposition among learning strategists and practitioners which embraces oscillation between banking and radical pedagogic approaches. In turn this enables the development of student sensibilities, empowering them to challenge the growing wickedness with which they must do battle

Support for UNRWA's survival

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) provides life-saving humanitarian aid for 5·4 million Palestine refugees now entering their eighth decade of statelessness and conflict. About a third of Palestine refugees still live in 58 recognised camps. UNRWA operates 702 schools and 144 health centres, some of which are affected by the ongoing humanitarian disasters in Syria and the Gaza Strip. It has dramatically reduced the prevalence of infectious diseases, mortality, and illiteracy. Its social services include rebuilding infrastructure and homes that have been destroyed by conflict and providing cash assistance and micro-finance loans for Palestinians whose rights are curtailed and who are denied the right of return to their homeland

Reducing Re-Offending Group Evaluation

This report provides an analysis and evaluation of the recently developed Reducing Re-offending Group pilot that was carried out in 2014 by staff at Addaction, a charity that works with people who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. The Reducing Re-offending Group pilot set out to give participants a better understanding of their criminal past and make sense of their actions to support desistance from future offending

“This isn’t getting easier”: Valuing emotion in development research

This paper explores the importance of ‘mess’ in development research and in particular the emotional mess of research. Through an exploration of my own research with a development education organisation, I argue that capturing and understanding emotion can lead to insights that are not only particularly revealing about the research process and the motivations of the researcher but are also highly informative about the subject area, in this case research in and for development