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\u27Who controls the past... controls the future\u27:: A Case for Dialogical Memorialisation
Get PDFUltimately, dialogical memorialisation is a way to promote critical thinking and engagement with these old statues, moving away from viewing them as nineteenth-century memory culture relics and transforming them into more dynamic parts of society which more accurately reflect the many different people now residing in it
Examining citizens’ trust in local government institutions: a focus on upazila parishads (sub-district councils) in Bangladesh
Get PDFAgainst a backdrop of strikingly limited research on the subject, this article examines citizens’ trust in upazila parishads (UzPs) – a historically significant form of local government institution (LGI) in Bangladesh. A set of indicators has been developed that help to evaluate citizens’ trust in these LGIs. Alongside secondary literature and official document reviews, a mixed-method approach was adopted for empirical data collection combining quantitative (a questionnaire targeting a cross-section of service recipients) and qualitative ( key informant interviews with LGI service providers) methods. The results revealed a poor level of citizen trust in UzPs, as the majority of respondents expressed dissatisfaction with their performance. This low level of citizens’ trust was attributable to such reasons as delays in service delivery, dishonest and unfair practices, and disrespectful treatment by service providers. From a ‘supply-side’ perspective, service providers mentioned many constraints to good performance including the challenge of meeting growing demand with inadequate resources, frequent staff transfers, limited scope for training on modern technologies, and pressure and interference from influential elites
Injustices épistémiques et recherche participative: un agenda de recherche à la croisée de l’université et des communautés
Get PDFCet article présente un cadre d’analyse innovant ancré dans le concept d’injustices épistémiques pour évaluer les recherches participatives. Composé d’une méthodologie de travail et d’un outil d’autoévaluation, ce cadre d’analyse a été développé au fil d’un processus participatif de production et de mobilisation des savoirs qui a pris place au cours des deux dernières années. L’équipe multidisciplinaire ayant entrepris ce processus est composée des chercheur-es et des représentant-es du Groupe de recherche et de formation sur la pauvreté au Québec travaillant à l’élaboration d’un programme scientifique de recherche sur les injustices épistémiques et les recherches participatives.
Nous défendons que les recherches participatives peuvent contribuer à apporter des réponses coconstruites entre les milieux universitaires et communautaires à certaines injustices sociales – dans le cas présent, les injustices épistémiques – qui sont enchâssées dans les processus de production des connaissances. De notre point de vue, les recherches participatives constituent des laboratoires permettant d’observer et de comprendre la production des injustices épistémiques et, le cas échéant, d’offrir des leviers pour les réduire grâce à la construction de ponts entre les différentes personnes et les savoirs qu’elles détiennent.
L’article est centré sur la présentation de deux dimensions de notre travail: (1) La méthodologie que nous avons mise sur pied pour bâtir des espaces de coapprentissage à la croisée de l’université et des organismes communautaires et (2) Un guide d’autoévaluation disponible en accès libre que nous avons bâti durant notre démarche afin d’aider les universitaires et leurs partenaires à s’engager dans une évaluation réflexive des processus participatifs de recherche du point de vue des injustices épistémiques. L’article met également de l’avant des défis inhérents à l’élaboration de ce programme de recherche ainsi que des réponses que nous avons pu leur apporter, et se termine par des réflexions sur les enjeux clés ayant émergé en cours de route
A Tale of Two Cities: Framing urban diversity as content curation in super-diverse London and Toronto
No full textIn major cities across the world policy-makers are searching for new ways to represent and govern their increasingly diverse populations. In this paper we analyse the ways in which authorities in two global cities, London and Toronto, have drawn on corporate, public management, strategies as their principal mode of diversity governance. In both we see a shift in policy making as a conscious attempt to reframe and re-imagine cities as corporate-like structures that can be conceptualised, represented, and managed through the lens of diversity management. In both cities specific representations of the city and its populations are curated to fulfil wider policy objectives. City governments present both as iconic centres of diversity, super-diversity or hyper-diversity, that embody and represent an era of progressive globalisation and new forms of contemporary cosmopolitan living. The presence of diversity is celebrated and seen a key component of ‘success agendas’. This paper is based on empirical evidence derived from a policy-oriented research project in both cities. Policy analysis and critical discourse analysis are conducted in both cities on the basis of review of policy documents at national, local and community scales, and interviews with policy makers. The paper first frames diversity as a technology of description, where we explain how diversity has become a curation strategy in public management within the framework of growing mobility of management frameworks and shifts in framing diversity in urban policies. We will then provide a comparative analysis of London and Toronto
DigiExplanation driven assignments for personalising learning in construction education
Get PDFPersonalising learning is critical for universities to achieving excellence in education. It entails maintaining an education system that is responsive to the learning needs, aptitudes and interests of individual students. Rather than imposing a ‘one-size fits all’ model, personalising learning is anticipated to ensure that every learner achieves his/her highest potential. Pedagogical literature suggests that learning-oriented assessments that are engaging, authentic and relevant are an effective mode for personalisation. DigiExplanations is a novel approach that requires students to create short digital media to communicate their ideas to ordinary audiences. It offers an opportunity for research-based authentic learning by harnessing digital media that exist outside of their institution and their digital competencies to create personally relevant and interesting resources. The aim of the research was to investigate the effectiveness of digiExplanations driven assessments for improving personalised learning in construction education. A case study strategy was adopted in the research. A first-year subject from the construction management degree was chosen as the case, which had a class of 159 students. A new assignment scheme was introduced for which students were required to develop digiExplanations in groups of five. The assessment criteria comprised: rationale for the study; depth and breadth of the discussions for the topic; appropriateness of media used in the discussions; creativity in the use of media (storyboarding); design of digiExplanation; quality of conclusion; and proper acknowledgement of materials used. After the submission deadline, an online survey was conducted with the students to assess how the new assessment approach facilitated personalised learning. Several findings emerged from the study. The digiExplanations based assignment provided similar learning experiences for students with different characteristics concerning their first language, domestic/international student status, work situation and digital competencies. Moreover, the study found that some considerations are more significant than others in designing assessments that can drive personalised learning, which are: personally relevant/interesting, engagement, harnessing internet resources and progressive feedback. The survey findings further suggest that while the new pedagogical approach achieved its intended aim, few students perceived it a cumbersome method as it required more efforts than traditional assignments
Facilitating reflective practice: developing built environment educators’ capacity for teaching and learning
Get PDFThe international literature on higher education emphasises the importance for academics and professional staff to develop their disciplinary teaching and learning practice. Teaching staff in built environment degree programs tend to focus on ‘what’ subject content is taught and less on ‘how to’ improve and innovate teaching and learning contexts and students’ skills development. To investigate these trends, this research reviewed the higher education literature and relevant international studies on strategies to enhance quality teaching and student learning. Findings highlight that reflective practice and engaging in a personal teaching philosophy and teaching profile provide an important link for individual professional development and basis for improving teaching and learning. The objective of this study was to apply findings from the literature in facilitating professional learning workshops, with a pedagogy for collaborative reflective practice and the development of a teaching philosophy. This research reports on the first stage of professional development for staff in built environment programs to establish a teaching profile through reflection on their personal and discipline specific pedagogies. Initial findings highlight the positive impact of reflection and collegial conversations about learning and teaching, as well as future opportunities for individual and discipline based capacity building for improving educational practice
Meaningful Evaluation: a holistic and systemic approach to understanding and assessing outcomes
Get PDFThe concept and practice of Social Impact and Social Impact assessment has developed and matured over the last decade. Despite this growth, confusion still exists with respect to definitions of social impact as well as which tools and frameworks are most appropriate. Central to the concept and practice of social impact is a focus on outcomes. This paper argues that a discernible albeit problematic pattern and approach has emerged in outcomes measurement within the social impact field. After briefly reviewing some of the key problems with how outcomes measurement is practised, it presents some recent approaches from the evaluation field that attempt to address some of these concerns before introducing a new approach to understanding and evaluating outcomes – Meaningful Evaluation (ME). A pilot Meaningful Evaluation of volunteer ethics teachers in the Primary Ethics program in NSW is used to illustrate the approach. ME combines the Map of Meaning (MoM) with insights from next generation evaluation approaches to understand and assess outcomes. Informed by appreciative inquiry perspectives, it provides a means to bridge the divide between positivist and interpretivist approaches in evaluation. Key to ME is the assumption that it is more likely that immediate outcomes lead to medium and long-term outcomes (changes in behaviour) that are sustainable and lead to impact if participants experience program interventions as ‘meaningful’. Meaning is an important internal outcome that is essential if longer-term external outcomes are to occur. It also shifts the focus to capture unintended outcomes, key to developing holistic and systemic rather than linear and mechanistic Theories of Change
Surviving the Survival Narrative Part 1: Internalised Racism and the Limits of Resistance
Get PDFThe concept of internalised racism (IR) has been criticised for its potential utilisation to perpetuate ‘victim blaming’. In describing the racialised subject’s indoctrination to racist beliefs about themselves and/or their group, the concept of IR has been a point of difficulty for scholarship which sustains a hyper-focus on racialised resistance towards structural racism and its effects. Some scholars have highlighted that this hyper-focus on resistance is connected to a political stance which essentialises racialised subjects as always resisting. In this article, I further this argument by demonstrating the limitations within resistance strategies employed by some racialised subjects. I utilise participants’ narratives from a wider study to highlight three forms of limitations (conscious renouncing, inadvertent complicity, and non-resistance) in resisting racist ideology. I then draw on these examples to problematise scholarship that sustain a hyper-focus on resistance, one that may inadvertently foreclose the deeper impact of racism upon the racialised
Hīnātore: Upskilling Māori and Pacific Workplace Learners
No full textHīnātore: Upskilling Māori and Pacific workplace learners research project investigated the development of employees who undertook literacy and numeracy programmes in their workplaces, during work time. This paper describes the findings from the project in relation to the processes used in the programmes and outcomes for these employees in eight workplaces. It describes ako (teaching and learning processes); mahi (work), how workplaces support learning and employees’ changed ways of working after a programme; and how learning is taken into and contributes to whānau/aiga (family) lives
Underlying structures of risk response measures among small and medium contractors in South Africa
Get PDFAlthough attention has been given to the measures used to respond to risk in the construction industry (CI), there is limited literature that scrutinizes underlying structures of risk response measures (RRMs) especially among small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This study, therefore, presents findings from an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) of RRMs. A positivist paradigm was adopted to collect empirical raw data from 181 conveniently sampled respondents in Gauteng, South Africa (SA), using a structured questionnaire. The results support the extant literature and empirically established the structural composition of risk response by two constructs. The construct with emerged measures was termed trailing measures while the one with popular measures was termed leading measures of risk response. However, the study yielded a two-factor model with all the six items supposed to measure risk response. Based on the results obtained, it seems that risk avoidance and risk mitigation are reliable measures for measuring risk response. This study could thus serve as a reference for the accurate measurement of risk response and for the development of agreed responses for each risk, including an appropriate strategy and specific responses to implement the chosen strategy. The study was limited to the CI and to a lesser extent, construction SMEs in Gauteng; hence the findings cannot be generalized to all SMEs in SA
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