Teaching and learning citizenship

Prof. R.R. Singh, Former Director, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and Prof. B.Deviprasad, Dept of Social Work, Andhra Univerity, Visakhapatnam at a seminar on teaching citizenship held for DRC researchers at PRIA, India in January 2008

Researchers from the Citizenship DRC are exploring new ways to use findings for teaching and learning with their students.

They decided to form a project to develop curricula and teaching within the DRC. They would like to produce course materials and pedagogies collectively to communicate learning to higher education and training audiences, using materials and case studies produced from the DRC, together with external material.

Through this, students will be able to relate their own experiences of democracy and citizenship to a broader range of cases and context and enhance their critical appreciation of the issues.

Teaching will be focused in the global south but lessons from the courses can be shared across the north and south.

In October, the first e-conference between DRC and other researchers generated a host of ideas about the scope of the project.

In January, the ‘Teaching and Learning Citizenship Group’ convened by Bettina Von Lieres at the University of Western Cape, South Africa and David Kahane at the University of Alberta, Canada, held an inaugural workshop at the PRIA offices in Delhi from January 17-19 2008.

Researchers from Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, India, Mexico, South Africa and the UK attended.

The workshop was important in establishing common goals for the project and exploring how to collaborate across the very different teaching and learning contexts in which they work.

These include undergraduate, postgraduate and professional courses aimed at people with experience such as policy-makers, NGO activists and community workers.

Common to most contexts is the differences in the kinds of students, activists and practitioners attending the course. Some want to know more about ‘citizenship’ as a frame for alternative discourses and practices.

For others, the possibilities of ‘active citizenship’ are new and researchers recognised the need to provide courses that offer a good grounding and understanding of what is happening in society around rights and citizenship.

There is also a need to de-mystify some of the successes that are promoted, and to make research accessible to students who may not be familiar with the terminologies and assumptions taken for granted in some DRC materials.

All of the researchers are committed to building courses around the ‘seeing like a citizen’ approach that characterises DRC research.

Many of them also want to include material from outside of the DRC, to show wider connections with the literature or how DRC approaches may be challenged from other perspectives.

Note:

The Institute of Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) runs three month Certificate Courses in distance education. Please visit http://www.pria.org/ for more information.