Nicola Ansell, Peggy Froerer, Arshima Dost and Claire Dungey have been undertaking knowledge transfer activities relating to their ESRC-DFID-funded research project on ‘Education systems, aspiration and learning in remote rural settings’.
In January members of the team spent two weeks in Chhattisgarh, central India, reporting back to school children and adults in the rural communities where they conducted the research. They held a workshop for teachers from the local area, addressed trainee teachers at the teacher training college and engaged in discussions with local and district-level government officials.
A subsequent workshop in the state capital, Raipur, was attended by government officials, NGO personnel, academics, and others. Attendees were enthusiastic to take forward ideas raised in the workshop that might make education better suited to the needs of rural young people, encouraging them to aspire to futures that are achievable and to develop curricula, resources and teaching methods that make such futures attainable. The team will maintain contact with the participants and follow up on any impact arising from the research.
Finally, a workshop was held in Delhi with a smaller group of national level policy actors. Team members then moved on to Lesotho, again making presentations and stimulating discussions about the research findings with children, teachers, adult community members and the national education policy sector.
They will proceed to the third study setting, Laos, in March. Nicola, the PI, has also been invited to discuss the findings with the international policy community at the 62nd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW62) at United Nations Headquarters in New York.
The project will be having a two-day symposium entitled 'Theorising young people's aspirations in a global context: an interdisciplinary conference' in March.