Hosting a delegation from Aruba

A unique phenomenon in our School of Social Work: two international visiting delegations in one and the same week ! As our internationalisation strategies are really paying off at the moment, we were happy to receive two different delegations from two different continents, both interested in cooperation. Not only did we have visitors from Turkey on Tuesday (see my earlier blog post), but this week we were also visited by a delegation from the University of Aruba, who had come to Rotterdam at the invitation of our (former) managing director of the School of Social Work, Rob Elgershuizen.
Most unfortunately, however, on departure, the delegation fell apart due to a serious hitch at Aruba airport. Although this was felt as a drawback, the faculty dean Paula Kibbelaar succeeded admirably in making the most of her visit in Rotterdam on her own. We got well acquainted with the setting, perspectives and history of the University of Aruba, the Faculty of Arts & Science and the bachelor degree programme in Social Work and Development.

Before arrival we had been approached with an extensive list of factual and probing questions to which the talks during the visit would hopefully provide answers. On the final day we could establish that we had come a long way over the past few days and that a lot of progress had been made in familiarising ourselves with each other's organisations, contexts, themes and issues. This had indeed been the objectives of the visit from the start.
Both parties agreed that a win win situation was something we should strive for. And so it was decided that each partner was to draw up their own list of interesting and viable opportunities to cooperate on, in consultation with their own departments and staff. As the common ground and many parallels have been identified during the final meeting, each party will make up their own mind and exchange the lists in the near future. A further meeting will then follow soon to enhance and consolidate this process in order to have some firm plans before the end of the year.

Hacettepe University delegation visits Rotterdam

Today we received two visitors from the social work department at Hacettepe University, Ankara. It is this university which can pride itself on having the oldest social work department in all of Turkey (presently 51 years old). We learned that the 1999 Marmara earthquake led to an increase in the demand for social workers, which led in turn to an expansion of social work course programmes across the country. There was a clear need for individual counselling which could help people gain awareness about their problems and gain the skills to use their inner resources to cope with the after-quake issues.
We were told that much like other departments in Turkish universities the social work course programme was American-oriented. Another important influence came from (writer, academic and consultant on social work) Malcolm Payne, who, by the way, among many other things, keeps a fascinating blog site on Self positioning I found out just now.
Most social work graduates in Turkey find jobs in organisations under the ministry of social policies, the ministry of health or the ministry of justice. Apart from that, social workers can also find employment in private social work organisations and NGO's. We were told that there is a real need for social workers at the moment as the number of qualified social workers is low.

It was all in all a good opportunity to get to know each other a lot better and explore opportunities to cooperate with each other. Trying to establish opportunities for sustainable cooperation we decided to start with teaching staff mobility, starting this year. By constructively embedding the perspectives of the other partner in current courses lecturers as well as students on either side can benefit. And this can be arranged on an annual basis for example. Opening up opportunities for student exchange on a reciprocal basis was another idea that was explored, next to organising studytrips to each other's countries. Altogether we had fruitful discussions !

The social dimension in European higher education

In the series “European Policy Seminars” of the Academic Cooperation Association, the ACA is planning to organise a seminar (on October 14th) that is spot on: the social dimension of higher education.
Here's the rationale as taken from the invitation:
The “social dimension” is an elusive but critically important issue for European higher education. The European Commission’s 2012 Lifelong Learning Programme call for proposals (issued this month) singles out “the social dimension of higher education” as one of its five priority areas for multilateral projects. In the call, the Commission has indicated specific preference for projects focused on such issues as widening access for underrepresented groups, tracking the development of expanded access for these populations, encouraging increased completion rates in higher education, and further developing the notion of the “social responsibility” of higher education institutions.
Social concerns have traditionally played an important role in the discourse on European higher education. After a boom in the social rhetoric in the 1970s, the issue re-emerged in Europe in the context of the Bologna Process: should the student body entering, participating in and completing higher education reflect the diversity of our populations?
Stated aims and ambitions are one thing, but how about the reality on the ground? Are our universities and colleges accessible for students from lower socio-economic backgrounds and immigrants and cultural minorities, to mention just three groups that play a role in the ‘social discourse’? Or is the social dimension, as a report of 2009 found, a rhetorical rather than a real success, and is it true that it is still not the “ability to learn but the ability to pay” which determines participation in higher education? Do universities and governments in Europe have policies for participative equity in place, and are these policies effective?
These are some of the questions which this ACA European Policy Seminar will address. The latest research findings are planned to be presented, among them a soon-to-be released EURYDICE study on the issue, the brand new EUROSTUDENT 2011 report and the external evaluation of the social dimension in the Bologna Process.
The European Commission will present its latest policy position paper on higher education and the OECD will provide intelligence on if and how our universities and colleges are catering to students from migrant communities. Two institutional representatives will provide insights on access and diversity ‘from the field’.
This being the working programme for the seminar, I regret that I won't be able to attend. Still, hopefully some of the reports and results of this seminar will be shared on the web and that's when I can include some links here to relevant, valuable information. I'm already looking forward to that. In today's world we should cherish all talent and provide opportunities for this talent to be developed via higher education.

An R M A dissemination seminar

How wonderful to see everyone really opening up to others and telling them about their personal hopes and dreams ! Just one of the many positive comments following a recent RMA seminar in Gent. This seminar was held last June as a channel of dissemination within the framework of a project in which 6 European countries are involved. The project focuses on applying the Reciprocal Maieutic Approach (RMA) as a specific method and starting point in educational and/or training activities and goes under the title of
"To EDucate is to make possible the DIscovery of LIfe".
And a discovery tour it became ! Attending a taster session, organised as part of a dissemination seminar of the RMA approach, the participants collectively explored views and dreams under the watchful eye of the RMA coordinator / trainer Hans Donders.
The seminar kicked off with a solid introduction to the principles of the RMA methodology and its founder Danilo Dolci. This proved to lay the basis for a friendly, open-minded and non-judgmental atmosphere in the group. After that, while sitting in a circle (symbolic for the sharing of power and feeling equal), participants needed little encouragement to start sharing their views. After all, the strength of a maieutic session is that people can freely express themselves, knowing (and feeling) that empathy has been established in the group, the key cornerstone in genuine human relationships. In such a mutually supportive atmosphere there was ample room for spontaneous and natural tuning into the other person's thoughts and feelings, whatever these were.

All in all, the RMA dissemination seminar provided interesting and useful information about the potential of the RMA methodology. But most of all, the seminar had a positive as well as empowering impact on the participants, a stimulating by-product.
(This project is co-funded by the European Commission through the Lifelong Learning Programme under the action Grundtvig Multilateral projects.)

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This blog post reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained herein.

Trends in social work

As part of the regular course programme in social educational care work (in Dutch: SPH)students were asked to identify national and international trends in social work and subsequently write articles about these developments. Some examples of this output was harvested by a few lecturers and passed on to interested colleagues.
One group had approached this assignment in an interesting and professional manner. They shared the magazine they had edited in a pdf format on the web, click here to have a look. And on top of that they set up a facebook group.
A fascinating development to see students applying the digital tools freely available on the web of their own accord.

Clipped from: issuu.com (share this clip)

Issuu was a well chosen platform as it has become a popular free outlet for online magazine publishing and allows clean pages and rapid loading of documents with unique urls for your documents. Well done, a great example of "inside out", providing the outside world with products composed inside university walls!
And here's another collection of international and national trends which was edited into a magazine called The Trendwatcher. Sorry, international readers... the articles were written in Dutch.