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Outcomes of the African Harmonisation of Higher Education and the Tuning Africa Pilot Project

Outcomes of the African Harmonisation of Higher Education and the Tuning Africa Pilot Project. Libreville 2013. The Tuning Project: A global movement. ‘The Tuning Project ’ has become an international movement that is currently spreading across the globe.

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Outcomes of the African Harmonisation of Higher Education and the Tuning Africa Pilot Project

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  1. Outcomes of the African Harmonisation of Higher Education and the Tuning Africa Pilot Project Libreville 2013

  2. The Tuning Project: A global movement ‘The Tuning Project’ has become an international movement that is currently spreading across the globe. The Tuning experience was exclusively European and came as a response to the challenge set out in the Bologna Declaration of 1999, involving 175 universities

  3. Spread of the Tuning Movement From 2004, the Tuning ‘movement’ gradually spread to other areas, including Latin America, North America, Russia, Australia, Africa and China. Tuning’ as a process is about seeking points of agreement, convergence and mutual understanding in order to facilitate an understanding of educational structures/programmes

  4. Why the movement spread/Reasons for Tuning? In Latin America reasons include ‘compatibility, comparability and competitiveness’ For Australia: It was to meet the undertaking of the EU-Australia Partnership Framework to “jointly develop a Tuning Australia pilot project to define the learning outcomes representative of higher education degrees in specific disciplines across different degree levels”.

  5. For North America The North American implementation of the Tuning Project within History as a subject area has led to more recent criticism of and questions on the tuning methodology.

  6. The criticisms from the American Project • Auseless assessment project • (with) standardized curriculum and tests • Allow(s) business interests to define academic goals • Allow(s) foundations to determine academic agenda • Reduce(s) intellectual development to utilitarian issues of employability

  7. Criticisms and Questions The criticisms and questions expose the contradictions embedded within the tuning methodology and what it can enable: • eliticismon the one hand, • and mediocrity on the other as it seeks to create a comparable system

  8. The Student Success Movement The role of Foundations like Lumina do not make the contradictions less in that besides Lumina’s own declaration of their ‘Big goal’: that by the year 2025, they want ‘60 percent of the American population to hold high-quality college degrees or credentials’ - they are dubbed the ‘mafia’ of the student success movement by IHE

  9. For Africa? In Africa Tuning was adopted as a methodology to facilitate the implementation of a number of key plans and strategies and these include the AUC’s (African Union Commission) Plan of Action for the Second Decade of Education for Africa and the strategy for harmonisation of Higher Education Programmes.

  10. For mobility of Africans across Africa Hoosen, Butcher & Njenga, (2009) indicate that the harmonization strategy was developed in order to foster cooperation in information exchange, harmonization of procedures and policies, and attainment of comparability of qualifications, in order to facilitate mobility of Africans across African countries for employment and further study

  11. … ensuring that the qualityof higher education The specific purpose of harmonization is to establish harmonized higher education systems across Africa, while strengthening the capacity of higher education institutions to meet the many tertiary educational needs of African countries through innovative forms of collaboration and ensuring that the quality of higher education is systematically improved against common, agreed benchmarks of excellence.

  12. The Chronology of events in the African Tuning Movement • Feasibility Study on the Relevance of a Tuning Approach in Higher Education for Africa • Validation of the Feasibility Study at a workshop in Nairobi, Kenya, 2011 and call for participation • Dakar, Cameroon, Cape Town, Brussels and Kenya project meetings: call for participation… • A report will be released soon

  13. The African Tuning Project Academics representing 60 universities across the African continent and across five subject areas produced a list of what they considered to be generic competences of the ideal African graduate, and lists of competences specific to the subject areas. Following after the methodology of tuning, surveys with employers, graduates, academics and students were administered as a way of validating the identified lists of competences, the generic and the subject specific.

  14. For Teacher Education • From the Cameroon discussions: The teacher as an agent of change for: • Social and economic development and growth and for • Conflict resolution and reconciliation for sustainable and peaceful living environments

  15. Sustainableand peaceful living environments? The leatherback sea turtle, sometimes called the lute turtle, is the largest of all living turtles and is the fourth largest modern reptile behind three crocodilians. It is the only living species in the genus Dermochelys. Wikipedia

  16. From the Cape Town discussions The meta-profile of the teacher education degree should be viewed as a Venn diagram-the integrated nature of the curriculum Four Areas of Teacher Education • Context (regulatory, geographic, socio-economic …) • (Theoretical) Knowledge/Understanding & Practice • Interpersonal Skills • Values & Ethics …………………………………………………………………………………. The meta-profile evolved out of the generic and specific competences, and validated through the surveys

  17. A meta-profile within the Tuning Methodology González(2012) defines a meta-profile as ‘a group´s representation of the structure and combination of competences which gives identity to a thematic area.’ She further states that meta-profiles ‘are referential elements and they are always mental constructions, destined to reflect and analyse possible classifications behind the reference points.’

  18. The African Teacher Education Meta-Profile Context Knowledge, understanding & Practice Inter- personal Skills Values & Ethics

  19. KNOWLEDGE, UNDERSTANDING & PRACTICE CONTEXT New G1; New G2; 13G;14G; 9G 4S; 5S 18G; 27S; 17G; 26G; 24G; 13G 12S;17S; 16S; 15S; 21S; 1G; 1S; 7/8S; 2S; 3S; 9/10S; 4G; 6S; 5G; 19/20S; 16G; 6G; 18S; 7G; 11G 2G 29G; 30S; 31S; 3G; 7G; 12G; 10G VALUES & ETHICS INTERPERSONAL SKILLS 8G;28G

  20. Teacher Education Tuning Outcomes This view of the meta-profile presupposes specific pedagogies in the teacher education curriculum delivery, informed by an integrated approach. It begs the question, what frameworks and methodologies will be able to deliver on these competencies? It demonstrates the ‘layered’ nature of quality issues in education, and creates a strong link between the ‘what’ to teach and learn with the ‘how' part of it.

  21. Comparisons across the World • Latin America • Professional • Academic • Social • Africa • Context • Knowledge/ • Understanding • & Practice • Interpersonal • Skills • Values & • Ethics • Russia • Ability to learn • Ability to work • Ability to interact • with others • Ability to live in • harmony with • oneself

  22. Similarities & Differences • Similarities • Emphasis on knowledge, including pedagogical knowledge • Interpersonal skills & interaction • Differences • The social role of a teacher: • a common feature in LA & Africa; • the teacher as an agent of • Change • Central role of values and • ethics • Africa: sustainable & peaceful • environments In Africa and LA there is a strong emphasis on values and the Social and ethical role of the teacher, from Russia there was an emphasis on what is measurable…‘instrumental?’

  23. Mega/meta-meta profile? (Cognitive) Knowledge: Subject + Pedagogical knowledge Interpersonal Skills Ability to learn + Life Long Learning Role of the teacher in society/Teacher as an Agent of Change/Values and ethics ? How to teach and assess values and ethics. Do good practices exist?

  24. Criticisms within Africa ‘… their implementation does not adequately involve higher education and quality assurance stakeholders’ (Shabani, 2013): A valuable criticism in the sense that it does not only raise questions in terms of how stakeholder participation is organised when initiatives that involve the quality of academic programmes are implemented (and who should participate), it also revisits the tension between quality enhancement and quality assurance.

  25. The Eco-systems of Qualityin Higher Education Following developments and arguments in the European Quality Systems in HE (Kehm(2010) some form of evolution, shiftsand contradictions around the various notions of quality in higher education are exposed. A useful perspective emerge: The Tuning project should be seen as part of the qualityeco-system within higher education . It has brought a ‘further quality-enhancement effort’ into the notion of quality, where quality is viewed ‘as the development of comparable criteria and assessment methodologies for collegiate learning’ … quality ‘at the classroom level’.

  26. The different layers? How does one successfully traverse the many layers, from the exo to the macro, the meso and the micro levels and successfully weave in all the intended quality principles (as far as curriculum development is concerned)?, … which curriculum script prevails; will it be the intended, the planned, the taught, the learned or the assessed? (Madiba 2010)

  27. The Ecosystem Approach to Quality in Higher Education Ecosystems are defined by the network of interactions that occur within them. The study of ecosystems (a biological perspective) mainly consists of the study of certain processes that link the living, or biotic components to the non-living, or abiotic components. An ecosystem quality perspective: creating the links and interactions, and making them (a)live

  28. The Quality Ecologists in HE There is then a need for Quality Ecologists to study the existence (and non-existence) and the quality of the links and interactions within the African Higher Education Quality Ecosystem. Quality Ecologists must serve as strategists for continuous improvement of higher education in Africa, to bring together efforts in quality assurance, promotion, enhancement, accreditation, ranking, etc. to make continuous improvement an achievable ideal

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