Conferences
The Power of Caribbean Poetry - Word and Sound
A conference on Caribbean Poetry will be held at Homerton College and the Faculty of Education from 20-22 September 2012. Speakers and performers include John Agard, Beverley Bryan, Christian Campbell (tbc), Kei Miller, Mervyn Morris, Grace Nichols, Velma Pollard, Olive Senior and Dorothea Smartt.
For more details download the call for papers and see the Caribbean Poetry website at: http://caribbeanpoetry.educ.cam.ac.uk.
The first two days of this international gathering will take the form of an academic conference, the final day having a more educational focus and therefore likely to appeal to teachers as well as scholars. Members of the Caribbean Poetry Project from Cambridge University Faculty of Education and the University of West Indies will be hosting the conference and disseminating its outcomes. Marilyn Brocklehurst’s bookshop will be available throughout the conference and some project partners, such as the online Poetry Archive and Peepal Tree Press, will be represented.
Education and the transformation of young women's lives: Commonwealth perspectives (October 28-29)
This highly successful 2-part conference was co-hosted by the Council for Education in the Commonwealth (CEC), the Faculty of Education (CCE/CEID) and the Commonwealth Secretariat. Drawing on the CEC theme for the year, Educating Women, Transforming Society, it brought together representatives of the UK research community, international, national and non-government organisations, and graduate students, affording the opportunity to reflect on contemporary educational initiatives that promote the well-being of young adult women in the Commonwealth.
UKFIET 2011 (September 13-15)
CCE were well represented at the 11th UKFIET International Conference on Education and Development held in Oxford (13-15 September). The theme for this year's conference was Challenges for Education: Economics, Environment and Emergency. CCE staff and their collaborative partners contributed two symposium sessions on Sustaining Transformation in Educational Practice through Partnerships.
Session 1: Meeting the professional development needs of teachers
Professional development for interactive use of digital resources in Zambian primary schools (Haßler, Hennessy and Zulu)
Transforming school leadership policy and practice in Ghana (Oduro, Swaffield and MacBeath)
Tackling educational ‘under-achievement’ through developing communities of practice in the Caribbean and the UK (George, and Younger)
Session 2: Issues of gender and pedagogy in East Africa
Successful women against the odds in Uganda (Muhwezi, Fentiman and Warrington)
Exploring hybrid HIV/AIDS curriculum development through dialogue with pupils, teachers and community stakeholders (Swartz and McLaughlin)
Pedagogy and leadership in a Tanzanian primary school: a whole school perspective (Fentiman, Wyse, Sugrue and Dachi)
Visiting Scholar Suseela Malakolunthu also contributed a paper entitled Vernacular school versus national school policy in Malaysia: an issue of integration or division to the syposium on Education in Multi-language Environments. For further information see UKFIET 2011.
June 2010
Conference in Mauritius
The Centre for Commonwealth Education hosted a three day invitational conference (funded by the Commonwealth Education Trust) in Mauritius at the end of June on MILLENNIUM GOALS REVISITED: TRANSFORMING TEACHING, LEARNING AND LEADERSHIP IN COMMONWEALTH CONTEXTS.
The 30 participants came from 17 different countries (including Antigua, Papua New Guinea, Mauritius, New Zealand, Uganda) and represented a range of academic institutions, NGOs, and government organisations. Dr The Honourable Rajeshwar Jeetah, Minister of Tertiary Education, Science, Research and Technology, Mauritius opened the conference and participants were welcomed by Vice Chancellor Professor Konrad Morgan to the University of Mauritius where they planted 4 ebony trees and took part in a press conference with Minister Jeetah. Leading development educators from across the Commonwealth presented papers on pedagogy and leadership in schools, on initial and continuing teacher education and on themes associated with the role of information and communication technology (ICT) in schools, on gender issues, and on HIV / AIDS. ![[pdf]](/images/fileicons/pdf.gif "[pdf]"){kind=small}
Conference Report
January 2010
Keynote lecture
Professor John MacBeath was a keynote speaker at the International Congress on School Effectiveness and Improvement Conference in Kuala Lumpur (5-9 January) at which he spoke about the Centre’s work and presented a jointly edited paper on work in Ghana with Sue Swaffield, George Oduro and Rosemary Bosu [did not attend]. More
June 2009
Cambridge Summer School
The Centre held a successful two week summer school from 22nd June-3rd July, 2009. Participants came from as far afield as New Zealand, Canada, Malaysia, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania as well as from the UK. They represented academic institutions, Government Ministries and international aid organisations:
- The first three days focused on sharing expertise and on knowledge generation on leading, learning and improvement in a variety of contexts selected strategically from around the Commonwealth. It also endeavoured to build capacity through collaborative knowledge generation and on furthering this through collaborative networks.
- Days Four and Five were devoted to working intensively on the projects underway in East Africa with a view to building on the learning and developing the next stage of the projects.
- Alongside this and throughout the second week, Sue Swaffield and John MacBeath worked intensively with a group of 15 Ghanaian educationalists (education lecturers, teacher trainers, ministry and district officials and a headteacher) to prepare them to lead professional development for headteachers across Ghana.
May 2009
World Bank & Commonwealth Secretariat Regional Caribbean Conference: Dr Molly Warrington and Mike Younger attended the conference on Keeping Boys out of Risk, held at Montego Bay, Jamaica, 7-9 May, 2009. 58 representatives were present from 15 Caricom nations, together with 38 development cooperation and expert presenters. The Conference was opened by the Education Minister from Jamaica, Honourable Andrew Holness, and the Jamaican Prime Minister, Honourable Bruce Golding, gave the opening address on day 2.
Dr Warrington and Mr Younger contributed keynote contributions to the first session of panel discussions, Keeping Schools from Failing Youth and Youth from Failing Schools, and to the session on day 2 when the development partners met together to discuss Cooperation to Keep Boys out of Risk. Useful contacts were made with Commonwealth Secretariat and World Bank officials.
Professor John MacBeath and Dr Ciaran Sugrue contributed to the Oxford Conference: Commonwealth Educational Co-operation: Looking ahead at 50 Conference. George Oduro, one of the CCE's partners from the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, gave a keynote address:Headteacher Leadership Development in Africa: the missing ingredient, while Iffat Farah from IED addressed the theme from an East African perspective. Ministers (from South Africa and Barbados) and the Prime Minister (Namibia) provided a rich account of issues.
Brunei: Professor Maurice Galton was invited by the Secretariat of the 14th International Conference in Education 2009 to deliver one of the three key note addresses Building Bridges: Smoothing the Transition When Pupils Move Schools at the ICE conference in Brunei.
September 2008
The Centre for Commonwealth Education Colloquium in Singapore in September 2008 brought people together from Ghana, Tanzania, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the UK (CCE and CET) to begin to develop initiatives on pedagogy and leadership.
Subsequent fieldwork visits to Tanzania, Kenya and Ugandahave taken place to continue to develop the initiatives on gender, ICT, HIV/Aids and pedagogy/leadership in the classroom.
The Zanzibar Round Table I, July 2008 saw the setting up of initiatives in East Africa on teacher education (in the areas of ICT, gender and HIV/Aids) in collaboration with the Institute of Educational Development at the Aga Khan University in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.