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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the legacy of mission schools in Ghana. It highlights continuities in the emphasis on character training and discipline as important attributes of educated and moral subjects. It also discusses the reasons for the ongoing high status of mission schools in Ghana.

Paper long abstract:

Education is tied to self-transformation and is associated with personal and professional improvement. However, the notion of education as self-improvement is not confined to the neoliberal era. It was also present throughout the missionary and colonial periods in the Gold Coast (present day Ghana), where education was conceived of as a way to bring civilization (as well as conversion) to African subjects. The Basel Mission were one of the missionary groups tasked with this, and coupled with a dose of religion and their unique approach to schooling, were for a time avidly supported by the colonial government for training the 'character' of Africans. They were lauded for their achievements in training in character development as part of their educational enterprise in the Gold Coast. What of today? What legacy has been left by missionaries to train the character of Ghanaians through boarding schools and educational institutions? What impact has this had on the contemporary education system, and the reputation of mission schools more generally in the Ghanaian context? This paper aims to contribute to anthropological literature on schooling, youth and aspiration in Africa by focusing on the importance of mission schools in Ghana, and how these were conceived of as tools for reforming Africans into new kinds of educated and moral subjects. It draws on fieldwork in a former mission school and explores the questions: What hopes and aspirations are imbued within mission schools in post-colonial Ghana? What is the future of these schools in light of changing educational policy?

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Paper short abstract:

Learning is not exclusively related to formal schooling, it is connected to multiple spatialities. My research among youth in Benin demonstraes that the importance and limitations of schooling can be grasped if schooling is sent into relation to other forms of more informal and gendered learning.

Paper long abstract:

Learning, as relational activities of connecting people to a given society and preparing themselves for an uncertain future, does not take place exclusively in formal learning places such as schools. To the contrary: Learning is practiced in formal as well as informal places, in households, fields, workshops, or the street. However, this multiplicity of learning, conncected to different spaces, is rarely followed by anthropological research.

Based on extensive fieldwork among youth in Northern Benin, I demonstrate that the importance of schooling, but also its limitations for processes of future building of youth can be grasped if schooling is sent into relation to other forms of more informal learning. Young men and women in the beninese hinterland often transgress different learning spaces, by combining intellectual with practical learning, often working at the same time, and, thus, learning by doing. Based on my fieldwork in which I looked at successful (former) students as well as at those who left schools after few years of learning and continued their trajectories in other places, such as workshops or informal work, I underline the concept of spatialities in order to better understand how multiplicities of learning are taking place. Part of the argument is that success cannot be connected exclusively to schooling. Rather there are different but hinghly gendered ways to make a living for underprivileged youth in Northern Benin.

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Paper short abstract:

In our increasingly digitized life worlds, online learning (‘YouTube University’) is often imagined as an alternative to formal education systems. However, I argue that place is crucial to understanding how seemingly neutral, placeless educational content lands in non-elite contexts such as Kibera.

Paper long abstract:

In the past few years, our lives have become fully digitized. This new reality offers opportunities, but new barriers arise as well. Based on nineteen months of fieldwork in Nairobi, Kenya, and especially in Kibera, one of its large low-income neighborhoods, this paper looks at the impact of place on online digital learning practices, sometimes locally referred to as ‘YouTube University’. I argue that place is of utmost importance to understand the place of (online) learning in aspirational trajectories, as these trajectories are always embedded in situated realities, both socially and materially. Moreover, countering the common belief that online content is neutral and placeless, I further argue that to understand the place of ‘YouTube University’ in the aspired labor trajectories of the young ICT professionals I worked with, we should also look at how borders are crossed between different worlds, physically and mentally: the situated realities of Kibera, the Silicon-Valley influenced Nairobi tech ecosystem and the global worlds of practice that exist – both online and offline.

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Paper short abstract:

Processes of belonging and integration of migrant and refugee children occur both in schools and in informal public spaces. Combining tools from urban studies and classic school ethnographies, and drawing on studies from Uganda, Israel and USA, I look at interrelations of place-making and learning.

Paper long abstract:

In this presentation I wish to share a comparative look at three different studies in Uganda, Israel and USA, focusing on displaced children in capital and border urban areas. Sharing methodological insights and empirical findings, I aim to provide a layered understanding of refugee integration by focusing on the varied perceptions of migration, locality, and senses of belonging that children have in the school and neighborhood spaces. Based on in-depth neighborhood analysis, school ethnography, and GIS mapping techniques, I looked at how refugee and migrant children are affected by local history and geographies of migration, educational opportunities in their specific localities, as well as the relative vulnerabilities and histories with donor organizations.

As integration is inherently contextualized, I investigated both their intersecting identities and how the local, social, and political context shapes the schooling experiences of refugee children, linking their experiences to broader ‘lived everyday geographies’ (Mankiw, 2015). These not only define children’s access and quality of education, but their opportunities for social mobility, interaction opportunities with other city residents and the way their sense of place shapes their learning and wellbeing . Analyzing these experiences within the specific contexts, but also comparing transnationally, provides insights on how place and education interrelate in different national-historical contexts. Expanding the scope of inquiry beyond legal migration boundaries and beyond the school premises, exemplifies how anthropology of education can be repurposed to look at the lived experiences of displaced children in urban contexts.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores changes made to an Initial Teacher Education programme in Scotland with a view to consolidating the nexus between place awareness and preparedness for school placements. These amendments promote an exploration of the broader cultural contexts in which schools are situated.

Paper long abstract:

The University of the Highlands and Islands provides postgraduate and undergraduate qualifications that prepare students for teaching in Scotland through programmes of Initial Teacher Education. With its most northerly campus being on the sub-Arctic Shetland Islands, and it serving a large and in many ways disparate land mass and various archipelagos through its other sites, the institution finds that it can relate to the educational experiences of teachers and learners in other northerly regions. These experiences have been encapsulated into the term 'Arctic Pedagogy' (UArctic Thematic Network, 2019), which intrinsically links place and education, as educational praxis is so profoundly connected to experiences of place.

This paper explores some of these connections, and also the changes made to the university's Professional Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) programmes that seek to enhance the extent that student teachers are prepared for teaching on school placements and for being part of the educational community within schools, by promoting their understanding of the cultural contexts in which schools are situated. Inspired by the discipline of anthropology, lecturers on the programme share with students examples of the cultural diversity existing in a range of places that form part of what it means to be a person learning in a given place, modelling the approach that the student teachers themselves will take.

The paper considers the programmes' existing contribution to place awareness in education (cf. Redford and Nicol, 2021), and articulates the changes being made, inspired by anthropology, that are consolidating connections between education and place.

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Paper short abstract:

Schools do not exist in a vacuum of space. They are embedded, embody and are constructed against the places that they operate within. This paper considers international schools as institutions that leverage proximity to the national and local, raising their esteem, global persona, and marketability.

Paper long abstract:

Place matters. Schools do not exist in a vacuum of space, they are embedded, embody and are constructed against the places that they operate within. Place in fact shapes nearly everything about international schools, because without a conception of what is and is not ‘global’, there would be no point of reference from which they could differentiate themselves as providers of a niche educational experience and product. The global, national and local all play a part in the mutually constitutive formation of the 'international' and of the international school itself.

This paper examines two international schools in the UK, which relied on student and parent imaginations and desires about place and the relevance of global competencies and cosmopolitan capital for their future careers. This paper explores the ways in which students encounter the global in the everyday, as well as the significance of the materiality of the national in cultivating the creation of transformative environments and atmospheres for students. Through a consideration of the impact of the national and local within schools spaces, this paper offers a new perspective on international schools as institutions that can leverage proximity to the national and local to raise the esteem and global persona of the institution itself. Embedded within the British context, I argue that the study of UK-based international schools offers unique insight into the ways that educational institutions create atmospheres of globality and distinction, which are in turn, marketed to students.

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Paper short abstract:

The contribution analyses the collaborative ethnography carried out with a group of students in the historical fish market of Catania. The student's involvement in mapping local practices and knowledge made strengthening relations with and caring for the territory possible.

Paper long abstract:

The disastrous impact of climate change is a central topic of debate worldwide. The research carried out in the context of the historic 'Pescheria' market in the city of Catania as part of the 'Re-city Resilient City - Everyday Revolution' project aimed to critically analyse resilience paradigms that place the responsibility for the outcomes of disasters on the affected communities and divert attention from the root causes and global interconnections. Ethnographic field research has analysed spatial relations and social market practices, highlighting forms of adaptation and resilience to flooding phenomena.

This proposed contribution intends to describe the workshop activities carried out with the lower secondary school students in the historic fish market in Catania.

The involvement of the students in the ethnographic work allowed the creation of a map of the spatial articulation of local knowledge and its relationship with the phenomena, with a declination in three areas: the network of underground watercourses in the market area, the social and kinship relations linking students and traders, and the interpretation of the Rubane transformations concerning migratory processes and the erosion of the market's sales spaces.

The crisis of the transmission of local knowledge affects territorial fragilities, making the prevention and management of hydrogeological risks more complex.

Participatory mapping has strengthened the students' awareness of the social relations that sustain the market context, favouring the design of care and flood risk mitigation actions.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the study abroad context as a place of anthropological learning, focusing on US undergraduates studying in France. It describes teaching methods that use the urban space of the study abroad context as a rich source of ethnographic data through which theory can be apprehended.

Paper long abstract:

Studying abroad has long been viewed as an essential part of the US American undergraduate education, a means to broaden horizons, be immersed in new languages and cultures and foster cross-cultural understanding and communication. In some ways, this experience is similar to what the aspiring anthropologist undergoes when she conducts fieldwork, often in unfamiliar spaces, where new understandings emerge from interactions that take place in a foreign language and in new and different cultural contexts. This paper focuses on the context of teaching anthropology courses to US undergraduates at two American institutions in Paris, France. I reflect on how place and space can be used as pedagogical tools to engage students—many of whom have little background in anthropology or social science—in developing ethnographic methods of observation and analysis, using their placement as study abroad students in a European urban space as a foundation for developing critical and comparative awareness of important social issues. I describe experimental methods I have been using in a linguistic anthropology course on language in France and in a course on migration and Europe, considering how theoretical anthropological concepts can be conveyed using hands-on or practical approaches. The paper invites discussion on how to further develop creative teaching methods that encourage students to take an anthropological perspective into novel spaces they encounter at home or abroad, and in turn to bring those spaces into the classroom for critical reflection and review.

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Paper long abstract:

In this research, I will present an investigation conducted during my doctoral fieldwork within an indigenous school in Taiwan. The primary focus is to address the issue of serial colonialism and its impact on ‘Atayal schools. These schools aim to reverse the stigmatised identity of indigenous communities by incorporating indigenous cultural traditions (known as gaga) into their curriculum, especially, bring school children to their ancestral homeland in the mountain. However, ‘Atayal schools still face the challenge of meeting the national standardised test requirements and achieving satisfactory results by asking Atayal schoolchildren to do the exam paper in the aftermath of their gaga curriculum in the mountain. The objective of this result is to explore the development contemporary indigenous identity within the afterschool programme of an ‘Atayal School’. By examining various pedagogical perspective and the role of imaginative identity, I aim to investigate how key academic subjects such as mathematics, English, and Chinese reading are taught through the afterschool curriculum to produce the ‘educated’ indigenous student. Additionally, I will explore the experiences of indigenous-community-based teachers and how the afterschool programme contributes to the caring of indigenous student/children. Overall, this research seeks to shed light on the intersection of indigenous identity, academic subjects, and the role of afterschool programme in nurturing the indigenous students’ identity via schooling.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the role of public anthropology in bridging the gap between cultural heritage and indigenous sovereignty in Taiwan. I will share an ethnography about how indigenous education has emerged as a strategy for sustainable cultural heritage management within indigenous societies.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the role of public anthropology in bridging the gap between cultural heritage management and the development of cultural sovereignty within Bunun society in Taiwan. The Bunun people, one of Taiwan’s indigenous groups, faced forced displacement from the mountain areas during the Japanese colonial period (1895-1945), ultimately being relocated to reservations on the plains starting in 1930. Previously, their ancestors lived in traditional stone houses, which were later ruined by these displacement policies, resulting in the loss of knowledge and skills necessary for constructing and innovating these structures. In an effort to reclaim the ancestral knowledge of stone house construction, the Bunun people returned to their native lands and collaborated with architects, anthropologists, and historical heritage specialists to renovate a dilapidated stone house in 2018. Subsequently, in 2021, this restored stone house received recognition as a cultural landscape by the Taiwanese government. This paper elucidates how Bunun teachers in elementary schools utilised the renovated stone house as a site for teaching Bunun culture by integrating house culture lessons into their curriculum. Moreover, it examines how indigenous education has emerged as a strategy for sustainable cultural heritage management. Finally, the paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of public anthropology practices concerning cultural sovereignty and indigenous education within indigenous societies.

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Paper short abstract:

My case study, based on a comparative approach between a clinic and a university, focuses on highlighting the different processes of learning and teaching Chinese medicine in Taiwan. I aim to understand the processes behind the different ways of interpreting Chinese medicine in a globalised world.

Paper long abstract:

Chinese medicine (CM) is one of the oldest medical systems in the world. Its origins date back more than 2,000 years. In Taiwan, CM was taught from master to disciple until the second half of the 1900s, when it began to be taught at university. These two systems of teaching and learning continued to coexist until 2011 when it became necessary to attend university to become a licensed doctor. Does the transmission of knowledge from master to apprentice still exist in contemporary Taiwan? If so, what is the difference between studying Chinese medicine inside or outside universities? In general, what is the teaching and learning process of Chinese medicine in modern-day Taiwan?

In this paper, I argue not only that there are still unofficial methods of learning CM in Taiwan, but also that they are widely used. Based on my case study, I will try to show how these formal and informal systems are linked to a different interpretation of Chinese medicine and, therefore, to a diverse educational approach. Methodologically, this study draws on nine months of ethnographic research in a private clinic in Taipei and at China Medical University in Taizhong. I observed Chinese medicine classes and medical practices, conducted semi-structured interviews with physicians and practitioners, and carried out participant-observations, both in the clinic and at the university. By analysing the different ways of transmitting CM knowledge, I aim to investigate, in a broad sense, what forms Chinese medicine takes in a global context.

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Paper short abstract:

In this paper, we show that modern schooling introduces rural Mongolian youths from herding families to an urban modernity. Yet, through their participation in rural informal learning and engagement with digital ICTs, they maintain their connection to Mongolia's countryside and its rural futures.

Paper long abstract:

The geographies of Mongolia’s rural population have long been mobile. Yet, a specific form of nomadism has come to characterize the lives of rural children and youth: education nomadism. Young rural Mongolians spend most of the year in urban-based schools interspersed with substantial periods in their herding communities in the countryside. In this paper, we describe the experience of modern schooling, as well as how informal learning in the countryside also equips young people with relevant skills. The rural-urban divide is further blurred by young people’s engagement with digital ICTs. By conceptualising the geographies of education broadly, we narrate Mongolia’s transition from a generation perspective showing that young rural Mongolians from herding families are indeed introduced to an urban modernity. Yet, this does not imply a delinking from their rural origins or that rural futures are necessarily foreclosed.

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Paper short abstract:

Drawing on 18-months of fieldwork in a Cacua community of the Colombian Amazon, this paper explores ‘the indigenous community’ as a place created through intergenerational processes of social and political change, in which informal education takes place alongside formal education at school.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on 18-months of fieldwork in a Cacua community of the Colombian Amazon, this paper explores ‘the indigenous community’ as a place created through intergenerational processes of social and political change, in which informal education of everyday communal living takes place alongside formal education at school. As has been widely recorded, across Amazonia indigenous groups that were previously highly mobile, residing in small familial groups in semi-permanent settlements, have since been encouraged to live together in permanent village-style ‘indigenous communities,’ which have historically been built around missionary-run schools for children. Today Cacua children must balance skills associated with indigeneity, such as cultivating bitter manioc, making manioc bread, and weaving baskets, which they learn from family, with the skills they learn at school. For families, the importance of children learning skills from both formal and informal education is highly practical, as it enables children to help their families with everyday tasks of running the household, as well as the possibility of being able to help through access to a job after studying. For community leaders, the importance of the skills attained through both forms of education are ideological and political, as well as practical. Retaining a strong indigenous identity through the skills and knowledge attained through informal education is just as important as having the skills attained through formal education, such as being fully literate and fluent in Spanish, to lead the people of the community. Education, place, and its history are inextricable for understanding life today in the Cacua community.

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Paper short abstract:

I explore the role of knowledge acquisition in the transition of young indigenous Amazonians from rural to urban environments, particularly in Pucallpa, Peru. It highlights the link between ethnicity and historical inequalities, as well as the Amazonian youth's identity negotiation as migrants.

Paper long abstract:

During the last decades, native Amazonians have faced major changes in their living conditions. Young indigenous people migrate from rural communities to big cities, mostly to study at local universities. This way, urban life and formal education have become prominent for native migrants. My paper focuses on indigenous youth who study and live in Pucallpa, the second largest metropolis of the Peruvian Amazon, located on the banks of the Ucayali River; a multicultural milieu in which the majority ‘mestizo’ (non-indigenous) population coexists with more than twenty different ethnic groups. Against the background of an ongoing rural to urban transition process, young Amazonians negotiate between a traditional and culture-rich imagined rural past, and an uncertain urban present they struggle to fully adapt to. Based on thirty-three months of fieldwork, my research explores the relevance of knowledge acquisition for young indigenous migrants who are often invested, by their families and society at large, with the moral duty to carry on their elders’ endangered cultural heritage. In cities like Pucallpa, young indigenous people’s status as migrants —either temporary or permanent— intersects with their ethnicity and historical social and educational inequalities, within scenarios of displacement and fragmentation in the urban environment. Building on growing debates on the reflexive turn in the scholarship of migration, my contribution focuses on the relevance of knowledge acquisition for young Amazonians’ ethnic status and for the unfolding of processes of identity negotiation as migrants.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper presents research practices at Design and Anthropology Laboratory, at the School of Industrial Design, located in the historic city centre of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where the relationship between education and place has been the terrain and theme of contracolonial pedagogical approaches.

Paper long abstract:

What are the implications of taking the territory where the educational institution in which we are based as our field of investigation? How can we approach the university as a place where we inhabit? Investigating the relationship between education, research and place has been one of the main axes of teaching and research practices at the Design and Anthropology Laboratory (LaDA), at the School of Industrial Design (ESDI), located in the historic city centre of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Founded in 1963, ESDI is closely bound to Eurocentric approaches. It arose in a similar way to the founding of the city in which it is located: as a result of the occupation of Europeans and their ways of life and production. It should be noted, however, that these lands were not uninhabited. Neither in the 16th century, when the first European invaders arrived, nor in the mid-20th century, when Brazil's first design school was created. Quite the opposite. The colonial enterprise, set up by the imposition of monoculture and developmentalism, offered assimilation or extermination as hellish alternatives to those who found themselves here. Design, as a mode of modern Western knowledge production, bears the marks of colonisation and developmentalism. Since 2013, we have been carrying out various pedagogical and investigative experiments with students, taking the place we are in as the ground and theme for contracolonial exercises in participant observation, historical analysis, codesign and speculative fabulation. In this paper, I present some of the work carried out by LaDA researchers.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the disruptive pedagogical methods within higher education aimed to refocus non-Eurocentric teaching for a more global and significant contribution to the future of Craft.

Paper long abstract:

This research delves into the pivotal integration of innovative pedagogical approaches within higher education, with a specific emphasis on redefining craft education in Southeast Asia by diverging from Eurocentric perspectives. The primary objective is to make a more substantial and globally impactful contribution to the future of Craft. In alignment with this goal, the study proposes fresh perspectives to catalyse transformative shifts within the current educational framework, studio-based teaching, and localised knowledge production and exchange. Simultaneously, it aims to equip emerging artisans with essential skills for vernacular engagement on a global scale.

Drawing upon primary data collected from the Level 2 BA Hons Fashion Design and Textile Course in Singapore between 2017 and 2019, this investigation meticulously examines the outcomes of annual case studies. These studies redirected students' craft practice perspectives through a disruptive, place-based lens, fostering an understanding of the significance of their local context, resources, and environment. This facilitated profound explorations extending beyond creative industries, aimed at a global audience. The resulting paradigm shift manifested in diverse outcomes, including films, sound, performance, business ventures, and crafted products.

The subsequent discussion and conclusion distil crucial insights and best practices applicable on a global scale, thereby informing future approaches to creative thinking. Employing a disruptive methodology, this study reflects on the transformation of contemporary perceptions and practices in craft, envisioning a more sustainable future.

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Paper long abstract:

Created by the 2023 New Zealand General Election, the coalition stated, ‘all references to…’relationship-based education guidelines’ will be removed and replaced from curriculum’ and, ‘to stop all work confirming the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has no binding legal effect on New Zealand.’ Electioneering tactics of ‘Māori-bashing’ is not new, responses to the continued attacks to our cultural well-being against volatile successive governments are necessary. Many are faced with intergenerational and geographical barriers in accessing their culture, ancestral lands and identity; 95% of whom have little to no familial connections to their ancestral marae. Despite efforts, the Battle Plan must change, strengthen our resolve, reconnecting our whakapapa - raise Rangatira.

Ngāi Te Rākatō Academy (NTRA)was established in response to the continued effects of colonization on marae and the place of tamariki in their futures. Its aims are to develop Rangatira founded on the principle whai Mātauranga by encouraging our tamariki to visualise their own goals in the context of where we live, socialise and interact and to better understand our environment, communities and, in the world we live. NTRA is a unique model that creates the climate for intergenerational connection to their past, their present and to develop their futures through fostering relationships with their marae and each other. Key is to ensure we embed Ngāi Te Rākatō tikanga: cultural knowledge, and kawa; leadership and governance, within our tamariki confirming that our practices live on in future generations.

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Paper long abstract:

Since WWII over 80% of the Māori population, covering three successive generations, has re-centered itself far away from their ancestral kin-communities (marae), living an urban lifestyle in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ). This migration was widespread, youth targeted and driven by two key factors, motivating Māori youth to leave their marae in search of a new life beyond their kin horizon. One motivator was the opportunity to escape the relative economic impoverishment and rural isolation; the other was Crown-inducements to attract labour into urban areas to build a post war economy. Young Māori were provided direct access to never-before experienced opportunities: relatively high wages for labour intensive jobs and access to state-sponsored benefits like housing, education and health. Within a generation these original migrants had reorganised themselves along ethnic pan-tribal lines, aligning with key industries and living in general proximity to one another. In the 1970s the golden year of plentiful jobs came to a grinding halt. NZ experienced a decade long deep recession, which hit Māori the hardest and retreating to their already impoverished marae was not an option. Three generations later (2020s) the vast majority of all Māori are urban-raised, struggling and seldom return to marae. From an anthropological perspective the intersection between ethnic identity maintenance in a colonised urban milieu and the desire to seek connection to distant marae at which the descendant is no longer known, raises a number of critical questions, not least, what does this mean for Indigenous children participating in today's colonial-prescribed education system?

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Paper long abstract:

Since 2022, the New Zealand secondary education curriculum has made the teaching of our country’s history compulsory. The policy aims to help all children understand more about places and people who have lived in Aotearoa over time. New Zealand has a long way to go, however, in enabling and supporting community-led or place-based education that nurtures connections between young Māori and their ancestral marae.

This paper discusses findings from a three year research project that examined young Māori views about how to strengthen connections and increase learning about their marae, especially those who live away from ancestral homelands.

We undertook surveys at ten secondary schools throughout the country amongst just under 400 students.

The paper discusses Māori student views on the importance but also challenges of the internet and social media as mechanisms to help with learning. It also explores opportunities and challenges of the same from marae community members.

It considers other marae community education initiatives that are not part of formal education but which are significantly impactful for student wellbeing, identity, sense of self and confidence. All these factors are critical to supporting good learning outcomes. While marae community education programmes are micro-level, operated often on small budgets and with volunteer effort, they should have recognition and support within and by mainstream education systems.

The presentation explores some of the reasons why young Māori want to learn more about their distant ancestral homes and concludes with opportunities that schools can further explore as a result of our findings.