Strategies and Tools for Enacting Gender Transformative Education in a Digital Age

Group Submission Type: Workshop

Description of Session

For over 25 years, Miske Witt and Associates International (MWAI) has worked collaboratively with organizational partners to improve educational quality by integrating gender equality and equity into education programs and systems at local, national, and global levels. Gender integration, which aims to transform relationships, institutions, individuals, and education systems to be more equitable, is a complex enterprise. MWAI increasingly uses online tools to implement gender transformative education strategies. These strategies include online workshops for “training of trainers” and for CSOs new to gender concepts.
This workshop will draw on MWAI’s experience and the experiences of workshop participants, to highlight key strategies for gender integration adaptable to myriad contexts, projects, and partners. Using case studies, scenarios, and critical questions related to integrating gender in international development and education projects in a digital age, participants will come away with concrete tools and related approaches from MWAI colleagues who have experienced the joys and challenges of knowledge exchange, skill development, and building relationships over more than two decades of working on gender integration implementation, research, and evaluation with governments, non-profits, and foundations.
Our experience indicates that gender integration is implemented most effectively through a hybrid approach of virtual and in-person engagement. This approach calls for ongoing planning, self-reflection, and assessment, as well as adaptability, and flexibility – that is, the ability to pivot suddenly in order to capture the “teachable moments” for transforming gender norms and stereotypes in relationships and institutions.
Drawing on successes and lessons learned in different contexts, MWAI has developed a variety of strategies and tools for gender integration, including the mixed methods Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Manual for Girl Rising, and the recently developed Gender Integration Resource Guide prepared for the USAID Jifunze Uelewe activity. One of the tools, the Gender Integration Cycle, has been developed over time to ensure that gender issues and considerations at various levels are identified, addressed, and evaluated collaboratively to support gender-transformative education programming. The Gender Integration Cycle tool can be used when planning and conducting meetings, activities, processes, or structures from a gender perspective to:
• identify where and how gender dynamics can disadvantage or privilege either girls and women or boys and men, also considering intersectionality;
• address effectively these identified gender considerations at various levels; and
• reflect on and evaluate the effectiveness of the responses to inform planning for future activities.
Such strategies and tools ensure and model gender-transformative educational programming that is contextually appropriate and locally-led.
Learning objectives
Participants will come away from this workshop with insights, strategies and tools related to the following:
1. Knowledge Exchange: “Meeting partners where they are” to introduce or to further integrate commitments to gender equity into their work.
2. Building relationships: Creating, building, and sustaining relationships in our digital era.
3. Perseverance: Anticipating and dealing with resistance to gender equality and gender integration.
Delivery plan to reach expected outcomes
In this interactive workshop, MWAI will briefly present strategies and tools related to the three objectives above. In small groups, participants will be given a scenario to discuss and/or they can draw on personal work-related experience related to the topics. The groups will then brainstorm ideas related to the learning objectives, using the strategies and tools discussed.

Sub Unit

• Book launches and Workshops / Workshop

Chair

• Shirley J Miske, Miske Witt & Associates International

Workshop Organizers

• Kara Janigan, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto

• Laura Wangsness Willemsen, Concordia University, St. Paul

• Acacia Nikoi, Miske Witt and Associates International

Presenters

• Kristeen Chachage, Independent Consultant

• Nancy Pellowski Wiger, University of Minnesota