This issue presents the outcomes of IAU’s recent Global Meeting of Associations (GMA IV), and IAU’s other on-going projects and activities. The In-Focus section includes a report on IAU’s activities in the field of Higher Education and Education for All and a selection of articles profiling projects in this field from around the world. In addition, this volume provides information on the upcoming IAU 2011 International Conference and, as usual, it features sections on: News from Members; IAU Collaboration and Networking; New Publications, and the Global Calendar of Events of which a longer version is available online. Download Vol.17 No.1 of IAU Horizons.
IAU and Higher Education for Education for All (EFA)
What began as a modest pilot in 2005 has evolved into one of IAU core activities, implemented as part of the recent 3-year grant from Sida. It stems from the Association’s firm belief that achieving Education for All (EFA) and education-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) may be impossible without strong and on-going collaboration with and input from the higher education and research community. However findings from the Pilot and the IAU Experts’ Seminar (January 2007, Maputo, Mozambique) concluded higher education’s potential and collaboration remain under-exploited often due to a persistent lack of communication and an absence of a common language between various EFA stakeholders and the HE sector. If implicated, higher education’s role is often reduced to teacher education. Yet university research in diverse fields and its community outreach activities have a direct/indirect impact on education. Not only do EFA stakeholders need to make full use of higher education’s expertise, knowledge and innovation but higher education itself needs to recognize its own potential contribution and engage more in the EFA Global Movement.
Project dual-approach
The project was designed to:
- provide information to the HE/research sector on its potential role in the EFA initiative;
- build capacities to enhance the participation of the HE sector in EFA-related activities.
Project Outcomes
Community building: the set-up of a Reference Group comprising both representatives from the HE sector (institutions and associations) and cooperation agencies, covering all regions of the world. The Group has served an advisory role for all project’s activities and participated in the greater dissemination of IAU work in this field.
Awareness raising: the publication of the brochure entitled Why and How Can Higher Education Contribute to All Levels and Types of Education? which aim was to increase the readers’ understanding of how higher education contributes to EFA/related MDGs and how it can do so more systematically. The brochure incorporated a language familiar to both the HE sector and that of the EFA Movement to facilitate making the connection and to overcome misunderstanding between the two communities. It was published in both in English and French and distributed widely. It is posted on the IAU website and HEEFA portal.
Information dissemination: the creation of the collaborative HEEFA (Higher Education and EFA) Portal – www.heefa.net and its bi-monthly Newsletter, entitled Linking the HE community to EFA and related MDGs. Its uniqueness lies in its specificity to disseminate information of only higher education initiatives in EFA-related fields. It contains a Project database on HE activities in EFA/related MDGs and an Expert database of CVs of experts from the higher education sector working in this field. The Portal exists in English and French versions and provides the framework for the possibility to be later developed into other languages.
Capacity building: the development of a module that gathers key EFA stakeholders and universities at the local/national level to define and agree on a common activity to help reach EFA/related MDGs locally. It challenges participants to “think out of the box”, to perceive the role of higher education in a new light, and to identify concrete tools to strengthen/reinforce HE participation in local EFA activities. The instrument was successfully tested in two different locations – developing and developed countries and in Spanish/English and French. The first session was organized with the Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Morelos, in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and the second followed in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in cooperation with the University of Ouagadougou and the Ministry of Basic Education and Literacy. Both sessions ended with the validation of an action plan developed by the participants.
Stocking-taking and review: the organisation of an invitationonly Innovation Conference, held in December 2010, at UNESCO in Paris, France to mark the end of this project’s phase. Some 50 representatives from the HE sector and cooperation agencies worldwide came together to evaluate the progress made towards improved inclusion of HE/research in EFA/related MDGs and to the review the project’s outcomes and propose ideas for a way forward. Participants unanimously called for the ongoing need to promote the role of HE in EFA and related MDGs, and collectively recommended outcomes be consolidated by the IAU with the development of phase two of the project. More concretely, the validated recommendations included wider dissemination of the work done and tools developed to all EFA stakeholders and through the media; the maintenance and improvement of already developed information tools; renewed implementation of capacity building module and a working model to facilitate replication elsewhere.
The realization of this project received support from the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida), the Working Group for Higher Education of the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA-WGHE) and UNESCO Participation Fund.
Contacts: Isabelle Turmaine (i.turmaine@iau-aiu.net) or Nadja Kymlicka (n.kymlicka@iau-aiu.net).
15 IN FOCUS: Higher Education and EFA
15 IAU and Higher Education for Education for All (EFA)
16 Achieving EFA through Transformative Research, by Norzaini Azman, Malaysia
17 Higher Education Structure and Education for All, by Loise P.W. Gichuhi, Kenya
18 A call to action: How Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) can take the lead in achieving Education for All, by Valtencir Maldonado Mendes, Spain
19 Role of higher education institutions in financing basic education: challenges and perspectives, by Moussa Mbegnouga, Senegal
20 Higher Education Opportunities for Students with Disability at the University of Delhi, by Neerja Sharma, India
21 Rationale for higher education engagement for EFA, by Leandro R. Tessler, Brazil
22 Read at school and at the university, by Jocelyne Trouillot-Lévy, Haiti
23 IAU Project on higher education/research for EFA and related MDGs, by Isabelle Turmaine and Nadja Kymlicka, IAU
Download Vol.17 No.1 of IAU Horizons. The in Focus theme of the next issue of IAU Horizons (Volume 17 No 2), to be released in October 2011, will be: Equitable Access and Success in Higher Education. It ties in with the IAU 2011 International Conference theme (see: page 4 & 5 of this issue or www.iau-aiu.net). Should you wish to contribute a paper for this upcoming issue, please contact us h.vantland@iau-aiu.net and or iau@iau-aiu.net.