Manuela Mesa Peinado is Director of the Education and Research Centre for La Paz (CEIPAZ). She is a member of the International Committee for the Global Action to Prevent War network based in New York, a member of the Panel of Experts on the Global Peace Index and a member-expert of the Cooperation for Development Council of the Spanish Department of Foreign Affairs. She has researched education for peace and development, has led numerous research projects and has numerous publications to her name, including: Education for Development and Peace. Experiences and Orientations from Europe (1994), Background and context on ED (2000), Education for Development: Between Charity and Global Citizenry (2000), Educating for Global Citizenry and Cosmopolitan Democracy (2003), Education for Peace and Education for Development: A common Agenda (2007). She has just published the research Diagnosis of Education for Development in Spain (2010), in partnership with José Escudero.
Contact: CEIPAZ C/ Velázquez, 14 – 3º D 28001 Madrid, España. mmesa@ceipaz.org
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At the beginning of 2000, development education (DE) had already undergone a certain evolution; the number of DE activities carried out had increased considerably. The consequence of the diversity of initiatives and actions was that DE had become a miscellany in which all kinds of activities were included, some of an educational nature but others that bore very little relationship with education: programmes in centres of education, educational tool kits, fair trade, fair tourism, exhibitions, but also auctions of paintings from Nicaragua, or “cause marketing” were included within the sphere of development education.
Studies on development education were commissioned by various institutions, with the objective of defining and framing DE actions. One of the first studies was commissioned from the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia [Polytechnic University of Valencia] (Baselga, P. Et al: 2000). As a member of the Research Team I designed the conceptual framework. The aim was to show how the configuration of the concept and practice of development education was directly related with the context, with the idea of development, the focuses of international cooperation and North-South relations.
It was necessary to place development education within a wider conceptual framework that put it in relationship with the different factors that bore an influence on its configuration and moreover it was important to show how this had evolved over the years. For this reason, a historical-structural approximation was chosen in order to facilitate the discussion regarding the concepts and focuses from a historical perspective. It was a question of relating, within the scope of cooperation, the views of development and underdevelopment and the objectives pursued, the strategies for action, the main players and the time frame. And also to analyse the predominant values and attitudes, according to the historical context; the most relevant knowledge and topics, the methodological processes, the forms of action and the main players.
This proposal made it possible to organise the actions of development education diachronically and therefore an evolution and change was observed in the discourses, which became more and more complex. Likewise, it showed how over the years new players and new forms of action have appeared. In any case, it was emphasised from the start that the division according to generations was a way of organising DE actions, in order to analyse them better, but that the frontiers between one generation and another were blurred.
Furthermore, all the focuses currently coexist, although the current view favours above all the focus of education for global citizenship, in which educational programmes demonstrate the interdependence and the structural nexus between local and global realities, between North and South, between daily life and “macro” questions; networking strategies are promoted, based on local, national and international networks thanks to the use of new technologies. Among the predominant values and attitudes the sense of global citizenship, equality of rights and global responsibility stand out. In short, it is a process of educating to form citizens of the world.
Four generations were initially proposed, using Korten’s (1987) proposal regarding the three generations of NGO and subsequent texts (Korten, 1990; Ortega, 1994:122-124; and Senillosa 1998:43). These reflections, which were mainly centred on NGDOs and on their role in development, contributed interesting elements to define a specific model in order to organise the actions of development education. The model was subsequently refined, including new elements and in the Study carried out for the Dirección General de Voluntariado de la Comunidad de Madrid [Directorate General for Volunteering of the Community of Madrid] (Mesa, 2000) the five-generation model was presented. This is the model that has subsequently been used as a reference in the Plan Director de la Cooperación 2008-2012 [Cooperation Master Plan 2008-2012] and in the Estrategia de Educación para el Desarrollo [Development Education Strategy].
The five-generation model was used as a tool for debate on development education in the sphere of NGDOs. During 2001-2002, within the framework of the Polygone programme, a European development education project, debate and discussion sessions were organised with NGDOs in order to analyse DE actions. These were very enriching and contributed new elements to DE. It is worth emphasising among these the debates on fair trade and responsible consumption and development education as opposed to cause marketing; sponsorships and charity marathons inspired by a charitable-welfare philosophy, with a very simplistic view of development; or the proposals of the World Social Forum based on their slogan “another world is possible” linked to transforming and emancipating educational proposals. Also the debates on global education, which sometimes forgets that the specificity of development education is its link with the South and with the proposals and claims of the organisations of Africa, Latin America and Asia, which promote inclusive, people-centred and sustainable development.
In short, the generation model of development education shows that there is no single and exclusive definition of development education. The variations depend on the sense given to the words development and education, and the context and time in which they are framed. Therefore, development education is a dynamic process, which generates reflection, analysis and critical thought regarding development and North-South relations; it is centred on a teaching process that combines cognitive capacities with the acquisition of values and attitudes, aimed at the construction of a fairer world, in which everybody can share access to power and resources.
During recent years the most interesting factor regarding the model is that it has been taken up by some organisations and institutions. The model has contributed to reflection on the practices of development education itself, although it can be observed that many organisations have experienced difficulty in promoting fifth generation development education.
In the current context it would be important to be able to take advantage of proposals that incorporate new elements which affect the notion and implementation of DE. I would like to highlight some of them:
In the sphere of development and international cooperation
-Views of development: proposals of degrowth at local level and their interconnections with the global.
-The notion of North-South itself. Some of the countries of the South (Brazil, China, South Africa) are now emerging economies that are promoting South-South Cooperation. This concept requires review.
-The role of social networks and the Internet in social and political changes.
-International solidarity and the role of aid in the context of a global economic crisis.
-The tension between global citizenship and identities.
In the educational sphere:
-Transforming education: train sympathetic citizens who are committed to social justice, democracy, equality and respect for the environment.
-Grasp the complexity of a global world: the necessary competences for understanding the world in which we live.
-Learn to look differently: building a utopia.
-Learn for action.
To look in greater depth at this range of topics we would require a specific article in order to expound upon them more fully. In Diagnóstico de la Educación para el Desarrollo en España (Mesa and Escudero 2011) we have identified a considerable number of innovative and creative experiences of development education, from which important elements for learning can be extracted. However, a lack of reflection and analysis is observed regarding the actions of development education. It is necessary to study in greater depth which skills and knowledge are necessary in order to educate citizens of the world.
Development education requires dynamic strategies and focuses that adapt to a social and political context which is permanently changing. The educational strategies and tools used in the teaching-learning processes are of an instrumental nature and should not be applied mechanically. It is necessary to prevent development education from becoming merely a set of techniques, games and participatory activities. Rather, these should be accompanied by a conceptual framework with goals and objectives to be attained. Educating requires effort and study, planning, reviewing, evaluating and reformulating actions both in theory and in practice. Development education establishes a permanent dialectic between theory and action. At the present time, action takes precedence over reflection and to continue advancing we need moments of reflection, training and analysis regarding educational practices.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
- Baselga et al (2000), La Educación para el Desarrollo y las Administraciones Públicas Españolas, Informe presentado a la Oficina de Planificación y Evaluación de la SECIPI-Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Madrid.
- Korten, DC (1989), Third Generation NGO strategies; a key to people-centred development”, World Development (supplement), vol.15.
- Korten, David (1990), Getting to the 21st Century: Voluntary action and the global agenda, West Hartford (CO), Kumarian Press.
- Mesa, Manuela (2000), La educación para el desarrollo en la Comunidad de Madrid: tendencias y estrategias del siglo XXI, Madrid, Mimeo. Available at: http://www.ceipaz.org/educacionparaeldesarrollo/index.php?option=com_k2&view=itemlist&task=category&id=5%3Aestudios-y-análisis&Itemid=5&limitstart=20
- Mesa, Manuela y Escudero, José (2011), Diagnóstico de la Educación para el Desarrollo en España, Madrid, CEIPAZ-Fundación Cultura de Paz. Available at: www. ceipaz.org/educaciónparaeldesarrollo.
- Ortega, María Luz (1994), Las ONGD y la crisis del desarrollo, Madrid, IEPALA/ETEA.
