Kiran's legacy is impressive, but theres still stuff to do.
If you haven't heard it yet, Kiran is leaving us by January 31st for a new challenge (good luck!). The IO and the IEC will have to go through the process of hiring a new Educational Officer for IO to take over Kiran's job...but wait, do they really? Is there any stuff left over at all to be completed by an educational employee? I'd say yes for three reasons: First of all, having had somebody with an Educational background at IO for the last 4 years has been a success story, and should be continued. Secondly, the educational development of CISV is an ongoing, continuing process. We'll always have to adapt our programmes to change. Finally, there's specific tasks that require some attention in the immediate future. And these are as follows:
If you haven't heard it yet, Kiran is leaving us by January 31st for a new challenge (good luck!). The IO and the IEC will have to go through the process of hiring a new Educational Officer for IO to take over Kiran's job...but wait, do they really? Is there any stuff left over at all to be completed by an educational employee? I'd say yes for three reasons: First of all, having had somebody with an Educational background at IO for the last 4 years has been a success story, and should be continued. Secondly, the educational development of CISV is an ongoing, continuing process. We'll always have to adapt our programmes to change. Finally, there's specific tasks that require some attention in the immediate future. And these are as follows:
1. Grand unifying theory
Albert Einstein started looking for it, but until this day, physicists still haven't found a formula to explain the universe. I hope for CISV we are more successful: While every single CISV programme makes a lot of sense by itself, we need a concept that unifies all of our educational goals. "Global Active Citizenship" is a good start, but isn't quite embraced by every CISVer. So, we either need a better theory, or a better understanding how every CISV programmes fits in. Last but not least, we need to articulate it in a way, that CISVers old and new, as well as non-CISVers can easily understand it.
2. Educational Department - ready, set, go!
With a bunch of personnel changes and restructuring the Educational Department is really still in its infancy. Under the leadership of a few volunteers and the new educational officer this department needs to be turned into a workhorse: This includes creating a defined distribution of responsibilities, terms of references, finding great people to take over the positions (and stick to them), maximizing output including internal development as well as external publication in the world of educational research.
3. Activities - the key stone of CISV
At one end of CISV there's our educational approach: What we want to achieve, expressed in our goals and indicators. At the other end of CISV there's our programme structures: Camp-, interchange-, project-format, age-limits, timeframe. In the middle lies something that we haven't been focusing on too much, recently, and that's our activities. A great CISV programme is usually the result of great activities. I know there's an activity database - but it's outdated. Also, there activity handbooks - but they've never been evaluated. Somebody needs to take a look at our best activity templates, and try to make them better. What are the activities, that no Summer Camp should go without? What is explicitly important when running them, to make them most effective and reach their individual goals? Maybe somebody actually has to go to a camp and watch how "Blue and Yellow" is being planned, conducted and evaluated. How can we manage to make every "Blue-and-Yellow" activity an impressive and lasting experience in every single camp?
That being said, I think that the job is a fascinating challenge, and maybe even somebody with CISV experience could apply. On the other hand, somebody that brings in new ideas may from other areas may be just as good or even better. We'll see.
I would add something in section three about "assessment" or "evaluation" of the effectiveness of the activities which we run. There's very little that's done (with the exception of the PDPEF, which in itself is a fairly flawed statistical tool from an educational perspective) on an organizational level to justify the programs which we run. While it is impossible to quantify the overall mission of the organization (World Peace has increased 13% this year! We've built 3,450 global friendships at Villages!), we are missing the boat on a lot of current trends in assessing our effectiveness.
I'd also love to see a push for some good qualitative research out of the organization. Camps, activities, and even AIM are an amazing breeding ground for data in qualitative research.
Regarding 3. Activities:
That's one part of the stuff we did at the writeshop in january. One very important brick in our LEGO-Training-Systhem are the activities and there are already some planning templates around as the distillate of the older templates. Björn and Maru made them (if I'm right).
On the other hand I must say, that both the in- and output should fit to afford/facillitate a good program. I don't care if "yellow and blue" took place in every summer camp as long as every summer camp had any activity with this outcome. And since the kids are planning the activities in a summer camp, it might be difficult to create a curriculum for them. In a village it might differ.
One interesting thing is that I would say your points 1 and 2 don't require an academic background in education. They require someone with excellent communication skills, management skills, marketing skills even, in the context of education and very specifically CISV - since a lot of that requires internal advocacy and management. If this person is new to CISV, they'll need a very effective crash course.
The third, activities, might require some educational background beyond that of most CISVers but might also involve complex statistics.
It's interesting to think what has to be in the Education Officer's skill set vs. the department's skill set and can that be based on who we have now or not?
As, in my opinion, the coolest (paid) job in CISV, this opening will certainly bring issues of IO location and broader personnel decisions to the forefront.
Right, it's probably the coolest and best (paid) job in CISV. But it's the best job to antagonise someone as well :-).
Very good points here to discuss about.
1. My opinion is that the great cisv educational theory revision brought to a wider lack of unity in the association. It is a paradox, among many other ones, we can hardly do womething about. How can you start a process in defining specifical goals and objectives for each activity, leading to some sort of sub-cisvs all around, and pretend to work on unity?
I think we can survive with this un-unity, as long as there is a change in perspective from now on.
I know I can be accused to be allenian, but when you explain to a parent what cisv can offer to their family you have the chance to say something very unifying: cisv can be a peace education path, from 11 on, or it can be taken in pieces, each person picking what they prefer, no mater their age.
2. We hired an educational officer to revise. I don't think we should continue revising. We must build this noew looking cisv (which in some way is distorted but still new). So, we need serious revising tools, but we also need to end the revision age. The department do not need a new kiran (does it exist?) but they need more skills and knowledge in psychology, group psychology and so on. Do we really wan to abandon all of our initial ideas?
3. I personally think the goals + indicators + evidences tool is a bit overestimated. I don't like to take tools as dogmas. It's a tool and as such it will fall into history soon or later.
But, I repeat it till I will loose my voice (or my sight...): To evaluate our work we need an independent institution to do it. Nobody can evaluate itself, otherwise we get biased outcomes. We are not neutral, so, we cannot objectively evaluate cisv.
I can't believe we do not apply this simple rule of the methodology of research. It was like that when i first joined the reasearch committee in 1988, and still now we are so presumptous to do something you simply cannot do if you want to deal with consistent a reliable data.
So, are we sure we need another kiran, or is this a chance to step forward?
peace
Luca
About #1:
The theory is there. Building Active Citizenship. I cannot think of a better theory than this. What I can't think of either is how is it really applying to our programs? How are we really "building active citizenship". In my opinion, with the way our programs function now and our camps go, we are very far from "building active citizenship". A major discussion and strategy should take place on how to make this theory the core of each and every program.
About #3:
There was an attempt last year to start a JB Activity Database on JBPedia so that the IJB collects as much JB activities as possible and make them available for every JB and JBer in the world to use and do. It included a section about the most essential things that every JBer needs to know (JB Goals, JB Essentials...) so that planners all around the world can share their ways of doing this. This project never really saw the light, but this year it's going to be revived, and discussion trailing from last year is underway to how extending to the outside of JB it should be.
1) The Passport and Big-Ed, together with TTTs, have brought educational contents and training closer to centre-stage in CISV. Compared to the old Section T we have documents that are accessible to the general public and that are actually in daily use. That is the upside.
The downside is that Big-Ed is only 45% the length of Section T. Simplification is good - but are we sure the baby did not go out with the bath water? A solid summary and overview is not the same as an academically founded educational strategy.
Section T was not accessible and not used - but if we want to be a research based organisation we do need to keep deeper documentation on what and why than what we currently have. And in my view that documentation does not have to be accessible/readable to "the general public".
Generally I see a trend away from academic research based content - we don't have Interspectives anymore, we don't have a paid external educational advisor and we don't have a solid and stable crowd of internal researchers.
So that would be my task one - get us back on track with regards to deep contents. Presentation is important - but contents is king.
2) Hani: You might be right that we do have the master story around Active Global Citizenship - but it is currently no more than a vision. As a vision it seems palatable, but the devil is in the details - how will it be implemented into each programme - currently the guides don't mention it with a word.
It is also a substantial difference between building an identity and story around a coherent product (programmes) and to actually create a vision and identity and then to make the products (programmes) fit the bill. The latter is where we are.
And that is the second challenge - to reorganize our programmes and make them building blocks in building global citizens. This would involve creating a curriculum for active global citizens (going far deeper than what Big-Ed does), and to have (somewhat detailed) learning goals per programme.
This will be the biggest challenge - as people are likely to fight very hardly against any significant change to THEIR programme (each CISVer typically has his/her favourite)...
3) And finally a question - do we need an educational organiser or an educational content king? To form a good department I would expect the former to be the need...