Navigating Rapid Change and Dynamic Instability - Education in an Age of Uncertainty

• In Event: Teacher Prepreration and Student Achievement in Afrikan Schools

Proposal

Historically, an external diagnostic approach has been utilised in the effort to address Africa's complex education challenges. This approach is now recognised as being entrenched within a colonial mindset which views the needs and realities of the African context from an external context, with low understanding and appreciation for contextual and cultural realities. Freeing ourselves from the shackles of this past necessarily passes through understanding it, contesting it and recreating it in indigenous ways that reflect a deep conviction in our capacity for recreation and change.

Paulo Freire (2000) stated that liberating ourselves either as oppressed or oppressors imperatively begins by breaking the culture of silence. He vehemently believed in the power of dialogue as an instrument to ‘name the world’ and an indispensable component of the process of both learning and knowing. Thus, seeking change is only possible through dialogic encounters that critically scrutinise the world in order to name it and eventually co-create it.

With this conviction, Africa Voices Dialogue (AVD) emerged as a dialogic platform which enables the voices of Africa’s educators, learners, and communities to be “seen, heard, and loved”. Founded as a Non-Profit Organisation in 2020 , AVD aims to break the silence about issues in education on the African continent through dialogue. AVD meets a longing for connection, shared learning, witnessing, and advocacy within the African education experience, aiming to support all Africans interested in building better learning ecosystems on our continent, with a profound respect for voice and lived experience.
Our sessions demonstrate that with deep networking, backed by genuine cross-sectoral partnerships, educators, policymakers, and practitioners - alongside their respective education communities - are uniquely placed to transform education on the African continent for the better. They are empowered by equal access to dialogue and the conviction that all voices matter no matter their specific perspective, or how critical or dissatisfied they might be with the status quo.

Although conceptualised prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, AVD started operating in the initial months of the pandemic, meeting a clear need for African education stakeholders to connect with each other for support, and to develop innovative thinking and praxis in dealing with the consequences of COVID, as well as the many other structural and pervasive challenges facing education on the continent. Though we are yet to fully grasp the long-term implications of the lost learning for the millions still missing out on school post COVID, the pandemic has had and will continue to have a life-changing impact – especially on those students who are furthest behind. This is particularly true where the pandemic resulted in a loss of confidence in current education paradigms, mass school drop-outs (as occurred in many African countries), and an exacerbation of pre-existing impediments confounding the delivery of effective education on the continent. This is further compounded by the impact of accelerating climate change on learning communities in Africa. Given these grim realities, each school’s return to functionality is a victory for all in the African learning community - and support offered to educators, learners and communities to enable continued learning environments is invaluable.

The African context lends itself particularly well to an exploration of the concept of the Learning Ecosystem approach, primarily because African culture has a high emphasis on inter-dependence within/between communities, as articulated through the uniquely African philosophy and practice of Ubuntu. It is this approach to collectivism, inter-dependence and belonging that Africa Voices Dialogue seeks to activate for African education communities, as a direct counter-measure to the prevailing educational paradigm of individualism, competition, and externalised evaluation and worth.

We believe that an approach which fosters Communities of Care and Belonging is particularly important in the VUCA and BANI eras. VUCA conditions (periods characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity - Friedman, Thomas L. 2007) have placed substantive demands on education systems across the globe, with teachers being forced to upskill as technology becomes both a necessity and an enabler; and parents feeling overwhelmed by shifting educational demands. The COVID-19 pandemic might be regarded as the climactic point of the VUCA era, catapulting the entire globe into an awareness of the tenuous nature of established systems and social norms. Our experience through Africa Voices Dialogue has mirrored the approach suggested by Friedman & Thomas - that the antidote to VUCA environments may be achieved through paying deep attention to our human connections and relationships, transforming VUCA spaces from:
Volatility to Visionary
Uncertainty to Understanding (and in our African context, Ubuntu-driven - ie the knowledge that our futures are intricately entwined with each others’)
Complexity to Clarity & Connection
Ambiguity to Agility & Agency

Post-COVID, systems analysts and futurists recognise that we have entered into a new era, with different challenges and complexities. Our current era is being described by the acronym BANI - “Brittle, Anxious, Non-Linear and Incomprehensible” (Jamais Cascio, April 2020). In such conditions, we believe it is even more essential to move away from linear, programmatic, highly hierarchical, and structured ways of engaging, based on authority and expertise, which cannot accommodate extreme complexity. More than ever, what is called for is a more human approach, in which the bonds of trust between individuals and organisations are strong enough to weather and navigate upheaval and fear. This is particularly important within education, with renewed calls for the transformation of learning spaces into more humanised and humanising learning ecosystems.

Through AVD, we are hopeful that we can play a part in learning how to navigate and transform our experience of the new BANI paradigm through refocusing our attention onto the substrate of relationship and connection so that BANI is able to re-emerge as:
Brittle - Bonded
Anxious - Anchored (stable, secure and supported by a community that you trust)
Non-linear - Nurturing (self and community/ others)
Incomprehensible - Insight and Innovation through shared sense-making.

AVD offers a space for participants to converse, connect, commit, and co-create, growing within our community the capacity to engage, reintegrate, learn, and create. We hope that this novel design approach can offer an inspiration – and an alternative – for our global counterparts.

Authors

• Robyn Whittaker, Africa Voices Dialogue

• Abdelaziz zohri, Université Hassan 1er