• How can we move beyond short-term instrumental North-South partnerships in education?

• What is a UNESCO Chair and what can this offer to universities in the Global South and Global North? What are the constraints?

• How can individual researchers, PhD students and international policy makers engage in more creative learning together?

Whilst partnerships in international education are designed to address global issues, they can also stimulate their actors in their personal and professional development. This session sets out to explore an alternative model for South-North collaboration from those usually established through externally funded research projects. The UNESCO Chair links universities in the Global North and South to share expertise and co-create new knowledge to inform national and international policy – based on a shared theme but without any prior committed funding. There are over 700 UNESCO Chairs established in universities across the world.

The session will be facilitated by members of the team from the UK, Nepal, Malawi, Ethiopia and the Philippines. The Chief Executive of the UK National Commission for UNESCO will provide an overview of the UNESCO Chair scheme and answer questions about applying for a UNESCO Chair.

Session facilitators: Kamal Raj Devkota (Research Centre for Educational Innovation and Development, Tribhuvan University, Nepal), Gina Lontoc (University of Santo Tomas, the Philippines), Turuwark Zalalam Warkineh & Abiy Menkir Gizaw (Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia), Ahmmardouh Mjaya (University of Malawi), James Bridge (UK National Commission for UNESCO), and Hélène Binesse, Lauren Bouttell, Burcu Evren, Theresa Frey, Catherine Jere, Yann Lebeau, Chris Millora, Anna Robinson-Pant, Qingru Wang (University of East Anglia). 

Come and join us on Tuesday at 12!

Anna Robinson-Pant

Anna is Professor of Education at the School of Education and Lifelong Learning, University of East Anglia, UK, and holds the UNESCO Chair in Adult Literacy and Learning for Social Transformation. In recognition of her research in international education, she was invited to be President of the British Association of International and Comparative Education (ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½) for 2018-19. As former editor of the journal Compare, she set up the ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½/Compare Writing for Publication Programme and is still developing this initiative in new directions. She is a trustee of the UK Forum for International Education and Training and serves on the editorial boards for Compare, International Journal of Educational Development and Studies in the Education of Adults. She recently led the UKRI GCRF Global Research Translation Award: ‘Meeting the SDGs: creating innovative infrastructures and policy solutions to support sustainable development in Global South communities (GS-DEV)’ – Family literacy, indigenous learning and sustainable development.

In the clip below, Prof Anna Robinson-Pant explains the rationale for the programme. This is followed by a conversation between Anna RP and Dr Anna Magyar who has facilitated and developed both the workshops and the writing programme since its inception.

Anna M: What difference do you think the programme has made to Compare as a journal and to ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½?

Anna RP:  When we first set up the programme, I was hoping that we could help demystify the publishing process for researchers who had never written for a UK-based journal before – so that it was less of a ‘closed shop’. Certainly, in the workshops, many people have said how useful it was to be taken inside the peer review process and see how an article had changed in response to a reviewer’s comments. Just on a simple practical level, we as editors learned how authors could be really put off by a ‘major revisions’ letter and think it was not worth trying again. This helped us to look critically at our own communication with writers, to think about how we could make the process more transparent, especially for researchers in the Global South.  This links very closely to ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½â€™s ethos too, in terms of trying to make a more inclusive research community.

Anna M: Relatively few scholars who engage with the process end up publishing in Compare. Do you see that as a problem?

Anna RP: At the beginning, we naively thought that most of those who enrolled in our workshops and the mentoring process would be successful publishing in Compare. However, given the low acceptance rates of articles – and the ever-increasing number of submissions to the journal – we now need to be more realistic about the odds of getting published! As the organising team, you and I have seen that it’s about more than seeing one article through to publication. If that works, great! But it shouldn’t be seen as a failure for the individual author if they don’t make it into print in an issue of Compare. Lots of people have said it was more important to participate in the programme for their growth as a writer, as a researcher and academic – and we have heard how their articles were sometimes published in national or local journals instead.

Anna M: Yes, this is what led to our idea of running a ‘writer champion’ initiative. We didn’t want the tools and approach that we use in the workshop to be dependent on us to reach people. We were also aware that in many of the institutions we visited, there were academics on the same wavelength who really wanted to support research writing in their departments. Also, we know that many universities in the Global South have in-house journals. So, we wanted to contribute to institutional research capacity, as an alternative to feeling pressured to submit to ‘high status’ journals. What if journals in the Global South are not seen as the poor cousins of journals published in the North – or in the so-called ‘international’ journals that are dominated by the English language and the academic culture of the North? (I’d better not go off on my favourite hobby horse but if this resonates for anyone, I strongly suggest reading Canagarajah’s work, which actually inspired us both!). On the other hand, editors of institutional journals at these capacity-building events welcomed the opportunity to compare and contrast the criteria (implicit and explicit) used by a variety of academic journals for evaluating papers and explore how peer reviewers approach the peer review process.

Back to you, Anna RP! Our current approach is based specifically on Compare journal. Why not offer a generic workshop about publishing academic articles?

Anna RP: One of the main messages of our workshop is the importance of engaging with specific journals and specific audiences. That metaphor you use about it being like walking into a room where a conversation is already taking place sums it up well.  You wouldn’t just jump in and start talking – you need to listen and work out first what is going on. It’s just the same with writing for a specific journal. The micro-level analysis that participants get to do in the workshops, using Compare published articles, of the reviews and of how the writer then edits the paper in response,  is invaluable for new writers who want to learn about this ‘community of practice’.  An important aspect is also that a current Compare editor attends the workshop – so they can explain more about the process. We HAVE offered a more generic workshop for PhD students, looking at how they can adapt their PhD thesis to fit with very different journal profiles. But this workshop also builds on our academic literacies approach, to consider how writers can learn about and engage with specific literacy practices, different identities, values and networks.

Anna M: Is it money well spent?

Anna RP: Yes, the idea of the programme partly came about because we wanted to use some of the royalties from the publication of Compare to improve the journal, particularly through addressing the barriers encountered by writers from the Global South. I think this has worked – not only in terms of the authors’ professional development, but also the insights that we’ve gained as an editorial team too. It’s not often that you get to meet and interact with readers and potential authors in this kind of intensive way through a workshop. It’s very different from an editor’s Q and A panel at a conference.

So far, 48 writers have engaged in the mentoring programme, from 20 different countries, mainly in the Global South. If you want to find out more about how the programme works, next time we will be talking about the roles of academic mentors and the different stages of the mentoring process. Join us next month!