Partnerships, Trust and Pedagogy
ADEA recently launched a new activity involving the use of communication for better education. In the following article, Richard Sack, Executive Secretary of ADEA, reflects on the bases for effective communication between the numerous stakeholders in education. Partnerships, trust and pedagogy are essential ingredients in ?Communicating about education?. ?Trust?, President Abdou Diouf of Senegal had stated at the opening of ADEA's 1997 Biennial Meeting in Dakar, ?is maintained through the common experiences, permanent communication and proximity which facilitate mutual understanding.?
The importance of knowing how to communicate about education is clear to education policy-makers the world over. Education, of course, is all about communication in the first place, in the last place, and all over the place. That is what happens in classrooms all over the world. However, communicating about education—communicating the problems and constraints faced by education systems, and the solutions and policies under implementation—is not a simple matter.
How is this done and what are viable strategies for doing it? The objective of the ADEA program on Communication for Education, developed and implemented with the World Bank and the West African Newsmedia and Development Center (WANAD), is to tackle these issues. The very first stage of this program began with ADEA's Dakar Biennial meeting, held in October 1997. Partnerships was the theme of that meeting. It explored partnerships between the numerous actors involved in making education systems work– between financing partners, between schools and communities, between ministries and teachers, between practitioners and technicians and researchers... It also recognized that we are interested in partnerships for valued goals, such as the improvement of quality and capacity.
That meeting was opened by President Abdou Diouf of Senegal who pointed out that trust is ?one of the determining factors in all partnerships.? This trust, he said, cannot be reduced to a formal contract. Rather, he stated, it ?involves mutual recognition of each partner's institutional and self-interests, expectations, problems, sovereignty, and cultures. It is maintained through the common experiences, permanent communication and proximity which facilitate mutual understanding.?
Trust, we are coming to understand, is an essential building block for development. This is being increasingly explored by scholars of development, some of whom refer to it as basis of the ?social capital? required for development. Perhaps this reflects a move away from ?pure economics?—which has not worked so well—to understand the processes of development.
Intuitively, we know that education is based on partnerships and trust. First and foremost is the classroom partnership between teacher and learners. There are the other essential partnerships: a quadrangular one between school authorities, teachers, community and Education Ministry; between Ministries of Education and their financing partners, mainly their Ministries of Finance, but also external financing partners; between practitioners and more up-stream professionals such as researchers...
In other words, partnerships are necessary because so many participants are involved in making an education system work. These participants include students, teachers, parents, community members, taxpayers, educational professionals, decision-makers, administrators who implement programs, legislators who vote budgets, media people who provide (and transform) information... They are all essential links of the chain that holds the education system together and enables it to go forward. Effective communication is needed to keep them all involved, informed and concerned.
The major challenge of education is that its theoretical, scientific foundations are weak. There is no generally accepted learning theory. In medicine, when a competent doctor makes a diagnosis, there is a high probability that he or she can predict the outcome. We have no equivalent in education. Throughout the world, parents are concerned about the ascendancy of the values and teachings of the school over those of the family—i.e., the socializa-tion power of the school. We probably trust more readily our bodies to doctors than our children to the school. And, to complicate educators' lives even more, everybody is an expert on education. It suffices to have been to school oneself, or to have children in school, to be convinced of one's expertise. This is why educational issues become so political. And, this is why it becomes so important for Education Ministries to know how to communicate effectively with (not ?to?, but ?with?) their various partners, including the general public, teachers, school authorities, legislators, the media, and students.
Devising effective strategies for communicating about education
So, how do educators—from teachers to ministers, including managers, planners and researchers—communicate and devise effective strategies for this. In the classroom, this communication is called pedagogy, which has much evolved over the years and decades and centuries. Current wisdom tells us that an effective pedagogy is one where the involvement of the learner is active, not passive. No longer do we think of students as repositories of what is taught them, but as active partners in the learning process. Indeed, modern pedagogy resembles President Diouf's partnerships, with trust playing a central role in the partnership relationship. And, as effective teachers know, the best way of developing this partnership is by keeping the process transparent. This means that the people with whom we communicate feel that they can trust the information provided them because it is complete and accurate.
If we accept this analysis as our starting point, we can begin to see the strategic implications in terms of:
- The
information we communicate. Partnership and trust imply maximum
sharing of information.
- Transparency
and the full involvement of all participants. Education policy
formulation is most effective when all concerned are active participants
in the process. This enables them to feel that they have a stake
in both the process and its outcomes.
- With
whom we communicate. It is necessary to identify clearly one's
partners. This can give rise to targeted communications strategies.
- How
we communicate. There are so many ways. One major question will
be the extent of reliance on professional intermediaries, often
known as journalists.
- How
we communicate pedagogically. This may well be the major question
here, the bottom line.
Richard
Sack
ADEA Executive Secretary
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