#frompovertytopower

The post is a compilation of the first thoughts of the Oxfam Novib Academy students on reading Duncan Green’s post for LSE'sInternational Development Blog. Head of Research at Oxfam GB, he shares his experience when teaching at LSE and explains how he organically used a participatory approach (PDIA) in his classes to create structure and content with his students.  His post is written from his experience as a professor; however, as students, how would this look like for us? Let’s see the conversation that ensued amongst us! Given below is a link to Duncan Green’s post:

http://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/how-do-you-keep-100-students-awake-and-engaged-on-a-friday-afternoon-iterative-adaptation-natch/

 Lisette: “It's great how people re-discover the fundamentals of "participation" the second they have taken their eyes off it. I think it's important to tailor a subject to the interests and demands of the students who are currently following it. But, as having been a Student Assistant in subjects that I am also following, I know that there are always the standards, demands and expectations of the university and their education committees. In that sense, as long as the subject has a clear format with clear learning goals and outcomes- it is a workable format.

For students it can be great to have a say! But an important point to note is that this works well BECAUSE they are Master's students who have a semi-outspoken interest in issues. I guess the same experiment with Bachelor students would end-up in higher funny-video content.... And sometimes it can be nice for a student to experience a well structured, thought-out  subject where all one has to do is follow the instructions.

Maybe this is a typical social scientist's answer, but I would say: the success and usefulness really depends on the context!”

 Tasneem : “While I am all for PDIA approach as it sounds very democratic and engaging, I would have some concerns regarding content changes. During my Bachelors for example, we had a very 'left' oriented development economics professor. There were a lot of students in my class however who did not agree and who wanted to study economics from a neo-liberal perspective. He tried to integrate everyone’s demands into the curriculum, but he also did NOT modify it much. He wanted us to be exposed to something apart from the mainstream, which I think now in retrospect everyone is thankful for.  So participatory definitely sounds very appealing perhaps for the structure of the lectures, but sometimes students need to be ready to explore the ‘(un)interesting’ and trust the professor in terms of the content. And Lisette, I definitely agree with you about the level of the students (MA or BA). I think the success of the method is very much correlated to the size of the class as well. I am surprised he managed to pull this off with a 100 students!”

 Jan: “Providing students with the opportunity to be heard can be very useful to improve education. Students appreciate it when other people (show they) care about their opinions. From my point of view, however, this should not be overdone, in particular concerning the content of university teaching. Students enter university to familiarize themselves with a critical attitude, one that helps them to continuously expand their horizon. Knowledge brought to students in lectures should be seen as providing them with the fundamentals/tools to ‘grow’ such an attitude. The real learning, however, comes from the students themselves. For example, when they are working with basic tools and knowledge; as an intern, participating in discussion groups, writing essays or articles. A professor can ask the students for advice to improve the transfer of knowledge, but doing this every lecture is time/energy consuming and even perhaps an obstacle for professors who would like to follow their own path!. An evaluation at the end of the program, or after 4 weeks, is much more suitable as the students 1) have already an overview and 2) have also a better feeling of what kind of professor they are sharing feedback with”