“No one intends to build a wall”.

Walter Ulbricht, East German head of state, 15 June 1961. (Building began on the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961)

 “The Wall will be standing in 50, and even in 100 years”.

Erich Honecker, East German head of state, January 1989 (Demolition of the Berlin Wall began in November 1989)

   Versión para Imprimir - Printable  Version

 

Editorial Number Numero Zero Cero.pdf

HOW THIS ADVENTURE BEGAN

The Editorial Board that founded this journal met for the first time in El Escorial (Spain) in April 2011. Almost a year earlier, the first contact between FERE-CECA, Intered and Intermón-Oxfam was initiated to promote the dawning of this long-term project on education research in Development Education.

 For two days, we discussed and defined the issues we had already considered and suggested during the months prior to that time by email, video conference and other means. But 21st-century advanced communication technology could not surpass the excitement and delicate tension of our first face-to-face meeting between people from different countries, with diverse backgrounds and personal experiences.

 With all this, the people present, sent and supported by our organisations, and their rich, complex history and accompanying identities, we got down to work. Our mission was actually to create a Town Square, rather than a Wall, which is what we feel existed previously.

 This metaphorical “wall-town square” dichotomy is quite meaningful this year, as we remember the fiftieth anniversary of the raising of the Berlin Wall, at a time when many squares, from Tahrir in Egypt to Puerta del Sol in Spain, have served as symbols of participation, protest and, in some cases, freedom. At a glance, we sense that in order for these phenomena to be really transformational, to turn walls into authentic town squares, time, patience, vision and a great commitment are needed. We hope this project will feature all of these elements.

 These walls are sometimes physical (like the Berlin Wall in the past and the ones currently existing in the Sahara or Palestine, or the wall separating one region in Mexico from the United States of America, for example), but above all, they are present in our manner, our way of relating to others and our strategies for building the societies of today and tomorrow. Higher up on the sociological ladder, closely related to the previous items, we also find walls in social structures, which we have inherited or created.

 These physical, mental and structural walls may afford certain safety, lodged in custom, routines or tradition, but above all, in an invisible manner that we are frequently unaware of, they block our capacity to see beyond our circle of safety, from different space, time, cultural or personal perspectives.

 Despite the differences and nuances in our views on Development Education, after working on all this, those of us at the meeting in El Escorial managed to pinpoint the importance of Development Education in breaking down the gigantic wall of desperation that makes us believe there are no alternatives for a different world. Turning such a wall into a public square, a park, a museum for remembering or a space for reflection is a sign that a learning process is taking place in that place, person or society.

 

WHO IS IT FOR?

To study how this learning process takes place, professionals who are passionate about everything occurring in relation to education and its tremendous possibilities for dreaming up different worlds got together. But we are also people who never stop questioning and wondering what it means to create different worlds and their relationship with justice and human dignity. For this reason, when starting our project we decided to bring representatives from three types of organisations together to foster the project, while remaining open to the possibility of other perspectives and social realities contributing to it in the future.

 This detail defines the identity of the primary recipients of the project, who are represented on the Founding Editorial Board:

-          Universities or higher education venues.

-          Centres for primary and secondary education and other educational spaces.

-          NGODs and other social organisations.

 As mentioned before, in all these places there are people specifically devoted to education, and we feel that they not only need to teach but also must pay special attention to how learning processes occur, how they come about, how they finish, how they remain in place and how the processes related to education for utopia are expressed. In the end, this is what abounds in Development Education.

 - In this mission, universities, and especially teaching schools, social institutions and similar entities shall play a significant role as regards the research and the quality thereof.

- Primary and secondary schools and youth organisations, to name a few, are fundamental as the territory for practice and experimentation in cultivating and caring for this utopian seed within all the dimensions and among all the members of educational communities, from formal and non-formal viewpoints.

- NGODs around the world aim to become fundamental beacons for reflecting on utopia through a daily commitment to social reality and how this reality takes faltering steps in constructing History. These and other social organisations should act as reagents, like certain chemical substances, for defining the lines of commitment and political involvement.

 However, with a quick glance at our profiles and the trajectories of these three actors, we can see that this breakdown into research, laboratory and reagents ends up being artificial because, with their capacity and initiative, each party already has many characteristics of the others.

OUR OUTLOOK

Thus, the mission that has led us to take on this project has three initial aims:

1. Promoting university quality educational research in Development Education within numerous spaces and educational contexts.
2. Creating a space for publishing research results on Development Education, in order to strengthen the latter’s role in early teacher training.
3. Generating a global learning community among different educational players on research and action in Development Education.

 The means for this mission are primarily:

 -       Creating a work group to foster and encourage these objectives globally.

-       Creating an electronic university journal on educational research on Development Education.

-       Creating an Editorial Board to guarantee the quality and accuracy of the journal.

-       Creating a social network representing the research community in Development Education.

-       Generating a space, along with the electronic journal, to expand the university research stage, allowing for participation at other times and in other research formats.

 These resources are currently implemented:

- In the work group, presently composed of FERE-CECA and Intered.

- In the electronic journal you are reading: The International Journal for Global and Development Education Research.

- The founding Editorial Board, which is composed of representatives of the University P. Comillas (Madrid, Spain), Newman University College (Birmingham, United Kingdom), Tecnológico de Monterrey (Monterrey, Mexico), FERE-CECA (Spain), Intered (Spain), Intermón-Oxfam (Spain), the Latin American Council for Adult Education, or CEAAL (280 organisations based in Panama) , Hagley Primary School (United Kingdom), Nuestra Señora de Fátima School (Madrid, Spain) and López Neyra Secondary School (Cordoba, Spain).

- The network and space will have the same email address as the Journal in the section called Ágora. Further information on this subject can be found on the website.

 

THE GLOBAL PROJECT

The Journal and Ágora projects are grouped into a project funded by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for Development, which we are calling   

 This name coincides with the website domain we have chosen: www.educacionglobalresearch.net

 These choices coincide with diverse basic features of the project, some of which we have discussed, while others remain unnamed.

-  For example, one thing we have not mentioned comes from the analysis of the great wall existing between knowledge groups in development education in Spanish and in English. Interesting progress is being made in this regard in both groups, but the language restrictions keep the information from spreading. For this reason, we have decided to make the journal and part of Ágora into a bilingual English/Spanish proposal. Thus, our project title has one word in Spanish (educación), another in English (research) and another that is common to both (global).

-  Furthermore, we have used an expression in a universal language such as mathematics. F(x) is an expression that can be understood, regardless or your language and culture. F(x) also refers to the scientific nature of our project and the substantial quality and accuracy we want to accomplish.

-  It is, perhaps, appropriate to clarify a few points here:

1. The road to the most precise aspects of university-related quality and accuracy is a medium-term goal. In this project, we have noted that these aspects are occasionally a short-coming in this sector, and we propose the Journal as a means of developing them. However, the Editorial Board has stressed the importance of resources for quality and accuracy from the outset.
2. Language is not the only barrier in the transfer of knowledge and research in Development Education. Therefore, we aim to unite perspectives and focuses within the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking worlds. Thus, we can see that the Spanish Educación para el Desarrollo and Ciudadanía Global still have few connections (or not as many as it could have) with Freire’s Educación Popular. Likewise, the British Global Education, Education for Sustainable Development, World Studies and Education for the Future have few connections with Civic Engagement or Community Engagement from the United States. It is interesting to note that none of them are the same, but they all have connections, meeting points in which learning is incredibly enriching.
3. As we have asserted before, all of these approaches are views of a common goal regarding research on utopian competence, although we must clarify that not everything is Development Education in the sense of a transformational Global Education. In our approaches, we must exclude those that are more closely related to communication for development, accountability or education on development, all of which are interesting, complementary and necessary, but which move beyond our area of study.
4. Here, we frequently use the term Global, and we even use it in our name. However, our view of what is global does not match with the economic globalisation process we are currently experiencing. Perhaps our stance would be closer to what is presently known as Glocalization and its view of interdependence, although the real key to the debate on what global is construed as, and its relationship with Development Education, has to do with overcoming banking thinking- in Freire’s words – and focusing on generative thought that overcomes hegemonic thinking or pensée unique.
5. In this regard, the debate on interdependence is one of the highways and a test of generative thinking toward our utopian competence, particularly because not just any interdependence is positive or just – one clear example of this is today’s globalisation model. And the ability to have an active, critical view in this regard is one of the most important exercises in Development Education. Back in the seventies international players began to highlight this.

  

OUR BASIC IDEAS

The following list is a summary of our stance on how we, the Editorial Board for this project, view research about Global Development Education:

 

 MAIN POINTS 

1. Global Development Education, as we at the Journal understand it, has diverse focuses and approaches, within its differing philosophies and names, and we consider this diversity enriching. It can and should be a source of debate based on mutual respect, as well as an opportunity for enrichment and group learning.

2. Any of the approaches implicitly or explicitly leads to the creation of a utopian responsibility, from a perspective of ethics and citizenship that activates our capacity for creative commitment to improving our world based on equality, social justice, human dignity, civic participation, democratic culture, the rule of law and comprehensive sustainability.

3. Global Development Education, construed as a basic competence is a fundamental teaching, as is competence in linguistic communication and mathematics.

4. The results arising from educational research – reflecting on how we learn – is a structural dimension in the development of individuals and social groups, and it is one of the essential elements in empowerment and emancipation for individuals and societies.

5. Educational research has many levels, from the simplest to the most specialised, but on any level it provides a basic, characteristic feature of our view of Global Development Education.

6. We view educational research as part of an open, shared, participatory network through various organisations, cultures and places around the world.

7. Educational research can focus on different features and stages, depending on how it is conducted, and by whom. At some points, the focus is the act of research itself, at others, it is the quality and accuracy of the work. More important yet is the focus on simple and highly practical applications. At the Journal, this issue is essential.

8. Likewise, occasionally, researching about how we learn in our utopian dimension – competence in learning to learn – may be an objective in and of itself. At other times, it may be oriented towards a purely instrumental objective of one very specific aspect of the teachings related to Global Development Education. Pure research and applied research are two focuses that interest us.

9. Through all of this, we endeavour to make quality, rigorous applied educational research in Global Development Education a force for the practice of holistic educational models that aid in performing actions with the greatest possibilities for meeting learning objectives, though aware of the complexities involved.

10. Although we believe that we are all potential global researchers, this project focuses especially on educators and their training and practice venues: teaching colleges, schools and training centres, social organisations, and so on, to foster change at the roots.

 

THE JOURNAL

Although we have already discussed some details regarding the Journal, there are still a few to be defined:

-          The Journal will be published in three issues a year, although there will be possibilities for widespread participation on the Ágora space between issues.

-          The Journal is bilingual in Spanish and English, but quality participation in other languages, which would be translated into the two principal languages, cannot be ruled out.

-          The Journal will always attempt to have seven themes for contributions, but these may vary freely depending on the needs at a given time and the specific issue:

Four channels for articles:

1. Basic research: This section will include research on diverse approaches to Global Development Education, regarding both specific and holistic issues, which enables us to expand our views on educational performance in Global Development Education.
2. Appropriate methodologies: This section contains studies related to specific methodologies for the presentation or the outcome of applying Global Development Education.   
3. Assessment and standardisation: We have created a specific section for this area, due to the needs identified in the sector. It responds to questions such as how we know that both teachers and pupils are learning with our practice in Global Development Education, rather than accountability, which often focuses our needs on assessment.
4. Perspectives, approaches and creativity: This section endeavours to look toward the future and analyse trends and channels regarding Global Development Education and all the aspects related to it. We view this analysis and forward thinking through a prism of creativity that questions hegemonic thinking and affords new perspectives on both specific and general issues.

 Three appendices:

1. Reviews of publications by international bodies: Finally, there are increasing numbers of publications by different international bodies. This section will provide a summary and remarks on the approaches offered in them.
2. Reviews of international events: We are aware of the fact that the sector is active around the world. This is meant to be an open window on the trends and debates that are taking place.
3. Reviews of books and publications: There are also increasing numbers of publications on our topics. Here, we intend to provide an interesting proposal for reading to support our research.

 -          Contributions to the journal bear a limited Creative Commons license, which allows the use of our articles by citing the author and source, although it does not permit them to be used for commercial purposes, or modified in any way. On certain special occasions, if the contribution is worthy, we will work with contributions and documents with copyrights held by other funds, always with their approval.

-          We will also strive to have the Journal included in numerous quality indexes.

ISSUE ZERO

 Issue zero, which you are now reading, is precisely what we do not want the Journal to be like, but it was worth making an exception. We want this publication to be primarily forward-looking, and yet in this issue we are mostly looking back.

 This time we are looking back to see how far we have come up to now; however, our idea is that, while keeping in mind the road travelled, we should look ahead and make our way forward.

 In this issue, we are asking ourselves, “What articles in our past have changed and improved our view of Development Education? With this question in mind, we took on the complex task of investigating, as we are talking about different perspectives and personal backgrounds, and about our organisations.

 The end result of all this is fascinating, aware of the fact that, while we have not included everything that could exist, everything here is relevant…

 The framework we have followed has been to select items that were decisive in their time, perhaps the hint of an idea that had a great impact by one of the benchmark authors or an acclaimed article, accompanied by a commentary that shows how the ideas contained therein have evolved up to the present. As we will see, the remarks on this evolution are highly varied and enriching. In some of them, we have been fortunate enough to hear from the author him or herself, and in others, we have relied on leading individuals in this sector. We thank all of them for the efforts they have made to give their opinions, to offer their remarks through their experienced views and to contribute so much, as we will see throughout this publication.

 Our journey through history starts with Paulo Freire. Most of his work is reflected in books rather than articles, but we have recovered one of his early contributions to a joint text published by the University of Notre Dame in the same year as Pedagogy of the Oppressed was published, 1970. “Cultural Freedom in Latin America” is clearly a political text, in Freire’s educational sense, which bolsters the incipient foundations on popular education and awareness that would later transform education in Latin America and elsewhere. We have been extremely fortunate for the contribution made by Danilo R. Streck, of Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, in Brazil. Danilo was one of Freire’s personal friends and he is the coordinator of the Diccionario Paulo Freire and editor of the International Journal of Action Research.

 Next, we will travel to North America, where we will focus on appropriate methodologies. These are having a great impact on service-learning strategies. In this regard, we have verified the importance of initiatives and research done by Andrew Furco, of the University of Minnesota (and previously at University of California at Berkeley). In our contact with professor Furco, he personally identified the founding text through which his proposal on service-learning began: “Service-Learning: A Balanced Approach to Experiential Education”. Furco’s work continued along these lines in the following years, with issues related to the evaluation and measurement of the impact on this strategy, which had an interesting impact in countries such as Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Spain and Mexico, as we are informed in reports from the Tecnológico de Monterrey. One professor there, Ernesto Benavides, a founding member of the Editorial Board of this Journal and director of Social Training at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, has reviewed another key article by Furco, in which he develops interesting, useful models for assessment of service-learning: “Self-Assessment Rubric for the Institutionalization of Service-Learning”.

 Thirdly, along the same lines, we continue with the assessment and, to be more precise, that that step further involved in standardisation. One of the worldwide references on this topic is Oscar Jara and the CEP Alforja (Alforja Centre for Studies and Publications) in Costa Rica, as well as the CEAAL (Council for Adult Education in Latin America) for Popular Education in Latin America. Oscar has been gracious enough to choose the founding article for this task himself and to discuss it; we are referring to an article from 1986 titled “La evaluación y la sistematización”. In this article, the progress made through standardisation compared to traditional assessment is briefly outlined and the foundations are laid for a procedure that will have a great impact on different areas of Latin America.

 To conclude the article section with an issue related to perspectives, focuses and creativity, we have travelled to Spain. Here, the perspective proposed by David Korten in 1987 was highly successful, through his article: “Third Generation NGO Strategies: A Key to People-Centered Development”. In this article, Korten proposed a type of NGOD that was later expanded upon by several Spanish individuals and organisations. One of these individuals was Manuela Mesa, currently the director of CEIPAZ (the Centre for Education and Research for Peace), in an article from 2000: “La educación para el desarrollo: entre la caridad y la ciudadanía global”. This article has taken root over the last decade in Spanish Development Education professionals and it is a common tool for analysing their practices. In this case, we have also been fortunate to have Manuela discuss with us how the article’s perspectives look over ten years later.

 After these articles, we are presenting the reviews area, which also represents an exciting and interesting stroll through our past.

 In November 1974, the 18th Session of the UNESCO General Conference, held in Paris, published “Recommendation concerning Education for International Understanding, Co-operation and Peace and Education to Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms”. This document does not talk specifically about Development Education, but International Education. However, it contains the basic principles of Development Education that we work with today and, interestingly, they have yet to be developed in many ways. To discuss this article, we are honoured to have Federico Mayor Zaragoza, director-general of the UNESCO from 1987 to 1999. Mayor Zaragoza currently presides over Fundación Cultura de Paz and he immediately agreed to discuss this important document, which we would do well to rescue from oblivion.

From this forgotten place, we have also recovered the report on the international event sponsored by the FAO, which took place in Frascati, Italy in 1972: “A survey on funding agencies and development education, in Belgium, France, Germany (Federal Republic) and UK”. This document studied the relationships and contradictions between differing views of Development Education, seen, on the one hand, as a means of fund-raising by certain entities and, on the other, through a new concept on Development Education, an educational and critical perspective mentioned in the aforementioned UNESCO document and in essays by many European NGODs. This report, prepared by three Dutch specialists at the Development Research Institute: De Clerk, Keune and Kooke, show certain trends persisting today at some organisations, which we might find surprising. To discuss and analyse this report almost forty years after it was published, we contacted Alessio Surian, a professor at University of Padua, and a leading figure in European Development Education.

 Finally, we move on to the book review section, of which we are also very proud. Here, we have included three books from three relevant fields in Development Education.

 Firstly, we remember the unforgettable book by Paulo Freire, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, which we still celebrate today, on its fortieth anniversary. There is not much more to say about this book, but to remember that it is one of the main influences in the tremendous impact that the Brazilian professor had on generations of individuals devoted to education and development. It would be easy to conduct a survey to conclude that this has been essential reading for generations of educators. However, we still expect it to have greater repercussions on educational practice than it has up to now. For this review, we have had the participation of none other than Ana Araújo Freire, Paulo’s widow. Nita Freire analyses the creative process for us, and what the subsequent years were like, through her first-hand perspective as a teacher and popular educator.

 Secondly, we have reviewed a benchmark book from the United Kingdom, published by the World Studies Project. We are referring to “Learning for Change in World Society. Reflections, activities and resources”, a book edited by Robin Richardson in 1978, which provides a highly interesting starting point for the work currently being done in England. As professor David Hicks, from the University of Bath, highlights[1]: Robin Richardson was the most influential UK theorist and practitioner in the field of global education in the 1970s and 80s. The World Studies Project (WSP) was set up by the One World Trust in 1973, an educational charity which had been created in the early 1950s by members of the All-party Parliamentary Group for World Government (Richardson, 1976a). Heater (1980) and Richardson (1986) have both noted that initiatives such as these had their roots in the earlier work of progressive educators in the 1920s and 30s when the term education for international understanding was more commonly in use.   

For this book, Robin Richardson himself has provided the review, through the perspective afforded him over the decades before, during and after the book was published, during which time he has increasingly focused on intercultural education.

 Finally, we are presenting a document, more than a book, which was highly relevant within Spain. We are referring to “La Educación para el Desarrollo: El espacio olvidado de la cooperación”, which was published in 1996. This document, published by Hegoa, the prestigious university institute at the University of the Basque Country, and written by Gema Celorio, Juan José Celorio and Miguel Argibay, brought attention to the place held by Development Education in diverse government department policies and even within development organisations themselves. Once again, we are honoured to hear from the same authors who wrote the document in their review on how this document has weathered over more than fifteen years, and their viewpoints in this regard.

 Nevertheless, this issue is also connected to the future, orienting our aims. We have already included a review on a document by the international agency, DEEEP (Developing Europeans’ Engagement for the Eradication of Global Poverty) from 2010. This document is DE Watch: European Development Education Monitoring Report. This study was commissioned by the European Multi-Stakeholder Steering Group on Development Education and written by Johannes Krause. It consists of a study on the work and views of Development Education in the European Union. This review was written by Mª del Mar Palacios, founding member of the Editorial Board, coordinator for education of the Spanish NGOD Intered and currently the Education representative at CONGDE (the Spanish NGOD coordination body).

 It is important to express our gratitude here to the School of Social Science and Humanities of Comillas P. University, whose students in the Licentiate Degree in Translation and Interpreting have collaborated in this project, particularly with the English to Spanish translations.

 Finally, we would like to finish this issue with a dedication. Issue zero is posthumously dedicated to the Panamanian sociologist Raúl Leis, Secretary-General of CEAAL (the Council for Adult Education in Latin America) until his death in May 2011. Raúl was a member of our incipient Editorial Board, always showing a highly active and participatory attitude regarding the project commencing with this issue. His vitality, wisdom and awareness will surely accompany us along this adventure.

 We conclude with the vision of deep citizenship that Raúl offered us in an interview from a few months earlier. This text shows us how his social concern and vision are an example of an educational process oriented toward a maturing utopia. Perhaps it is a crucial contribution for us to become fully aware of how this process takes place in building a future for everyone. 

 The problem[2] with active citizenship is that it is limited to more or less formal activities and just a few are entirely active citizens. Deep citizenship, however, goes beyond this and further into depth, to involve ongoing political activities and obligations. This is difficult to do within the constraints of formal democracy, thus requiring civil society to become politicized. Paul Barry Clarke, in his text “Citizenship”, defines the characteristics of deep citizenship:

1. Participating in the direction of one’s own life.
2. Being aware that one acts in and for a world that is shared with others and that our own identities are mutually related and created.
3. Understanding diversity as pluralism.
4. Participating in a conversation – not idle chatter – with the world.
5. Engaging in dialogue with alterity.
6. Offering alternatives so that citizenship is not merely formal or superficial.
7. Thinking boldly about the world to take on bold commitments to it.
8. Having a shared existence.
9. Reconciling, in permanent tension, personal interests with the universal good (becoming a part of the universal).
10. Being political, participating in the public affairs that concern us.
11. Shunning mere egotism and sectarianism.
12. Being an active citizen, expanding public spaces and broadening the scope of civic activities.
13. Educating ourselves in the exercise of citizenship.
14. Being social individuals, or in other words, being active participants in a direct democracy and, in doing so, exercising close-up democracy.
15. Being “I, the citizen”: cultivating thoughtful judgement, living a multi-tiered existence, enriching the exercise of freedom.
16. Making a commitment to the fate of the world. Endeavouring to improve oneself, others and the world. Being able to see things from the viewpoints of others.
17. Thinking nomadically, removing oneself from the tyranny of unique categories.

 With all these ideas, we have no doubt that we are adding the ingredients necessary to turn our walls into town squares. Let’s get down to learning and researching. Welcome!