Supporting Inclusive and Equitable Quality Education

The University of Leicester, Shout-Out UK, and Cartooning for Peace collaborated together to create a project called COVID in Cartoons. The project gave young people the skills and enabled them to use their voices to communicate their experiences during the COVID19 pandemic using political cartooning.
The political cartoon is a drawing, digitally or hand-drawn, using various artistic or written styles to express the author's views. Professional cartoonists were engaged to give feedback to the young people on their cartoons and improve them.

The training course was delivered online and involved four sessions.

Session 1 - Learning activities on political cartoons and their history

Session 2 - Understanding how the pandemic affected young people in different contexts and cultures

Session 3 - Identifying the heroes such as doctors, nurses, etc, and the inequality present due to the pandemic. Also, how the pandemic affected young people.

Session 4 - The participants draw and/or write down their responses to the impact of the pandemic and what they have learnt during the course

Presented by: Lucie Spicer, Head of Education and Technology,Shout Out, UK

COVID in cartoons

COVID in cartoons

COVID in cartoons

The University of Bristol developed a framework that promotes decentralised and locally relevant adaptive solutions to education design and delivery in low and middle-income countries affected by crisis. Three case studies illustrate this:

1. Jordan experiencing an influx of Syrian refugees into their national education system.

2. Burkina-Faso experiencing armed conflict and climate-related issues

3. Kenya with regards to the COVID pandemic

The framework includes 5 key elements of educational leadership and governance:

1. Systems thinking: This involves developing shared commitment and vision including policy and action between national governments and donors.

2. Democratising education governance: This involves engaging stakeholders at all levels (local, district and national) in order to mobilise capacities which are widely distributed across the different levels of government. This also includes stakeholders that do not have authority conferred by positions, for example, marginalised groups.

3. Strengthening system capacities at all levels: This involves the development of new, untested practices and improvised solutions which cannot be centrally mandated. This requires an enabling environment for flexibility and innovation, particularly at the local and district levels. It also involves information-sharing across these levels.

4. Strengthening learning systems: This involves adaptive problem-solving whereby solutions should be developed in the local context and learning from what is going on with the potential to scale up what's working. This requires context-relevant information systems which are oriented toward the experiences and outcomes of marginalised groups, and adaptive approaches to problem-solving.

5. Resourcing education for times of crisis requires bridging the funding gap, ensuring coherence between national and international priorities, and matching resources to needs at the district and local level.

Presented by: Dr. Raphael Mitchell, Lecturer in Comparative and International Education, University of Bristol, UK

Jordan Case Study

Burkina Faso Case Study

Crisis sensitive educational planning

Kenya case study

University of Bristol paper

This involves upscaling emerging graduates and widening participation for students coming from local schools and focused on inclusivity - disability, race, and lower economic students. It can be implemented across faculties and departments.

Presented by: Tanya Popeau, Director, Live Synthesis

"Rapid prototyping involves identifying a global challenge such as domestic violence, education, energy efficiency, etc, and working together with local communities and NGOs to understand the problems and rapidly design innovative solutions to local problems. Prototyping involves the following:

1. It involves generating new solutions to local problems and testing them in the real world with the people they are meant to serve before scaling up. The focus should be on meeting the needs of the people.

2. It involves a shift from rigid project plans and indicators to be checked at the end of the project to experimentation. The practice of experimenting requires collecting and quickly analysing data along the way to be able to turn learning into action.

3. It involves gathering feedback from the people the solution is meant to serve. This means that social innovations and solutions should be taken to the people at the early phase of the planning cycle when there is still a chance to improve them.

Presented by: Tanya Popeau, Director, Live Synthesis

This involved planning individual lessons to ensure black students are positioned as heroes or agents of positive change using 4 key reflective questions:

1. How does what I am teaching help them know more about themselves? This looks at cultural experiences students can bring to the lessons.

2. What histories am I teaching that widen their perspective of themselves and the world around them? For instance, a lesson on the Commonwealth has to include a talk on the British empire.

3. How can I share black joy? This includes having a good representation within the classroom in the teaching - pictures, slides, textbooks, etc.

4. Are there any racist ideologies or privileged perspectives that make the students feel inferior? Case studies can be used to challenge those steroetypes. The classroom should feel safe and comfortable to teach about cultures, it's a diverse world.

Presented by: Tanisha Hicks-Bereford, Lead Citizenship Teacher, Bristol Cathedral Choir School

Race discrimination guidance

Concepts of Racial Equality

The research work called for the recognition of indigenous science and knowledge. The Australian education system needs to position First Nations as having knowledge that can contribute to their current workforce needs around STEM education.

First Nations engineering is highly relevant to contemporary STEM education, it is both socially and technologically sustainable with complex dynamic designs and operations that make for compelling and engaging planning resources for students.

First Nations engineering can be included as educational resources in the classroom. It is crucial that both indigenous knowledge and non-indigenous science are mutually respected.

Presented by: Holly Randell-Moon, Non-Indigenous Lecturer, School of Indigenious Australia Studies, Charles Sturt University