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Author: Monk, David ×

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    Social Ecosystem for Skills Research: Inclusivity, Relationality and Informality
    (Bristol University Press, 2023-01-06) Metelerkamp, Luke; Monk, David
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    When the guns stopped roaring: Acholi ngec ma gwoko lobo
    (UTS ePRESS, 2020-05-11) Monk, David; Openjuru, George; Odoch, Martin; Nono, Denis; Ongom, Simon
    This article calls attention to the responsibility of universities to transform, through partnership, the community in which they are embedded. The authors suggest that, to find solutions to the various community challenges and achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), universities need to engage in partnerships of knowledge co-creation with the community in ways that value local knowledge and experience. The article elaborates on the efforts of Gulu University Centre for Community Based Participatory Research and Lifelong Learning, located in Northern Uganda, to show the potential of co-constructing knowledge for community transformation. The centre is part of the Knowledge for Change (K4C) global consortium, which is a growing network for community-based research. The authors share three research stories of community-based research that reflect distinct challenges faced in Northern Uganda and effective community-engaged solutions. Through an exploration of the Acholi ontology and epistemology of interconnection, the authors demonstrate that local communities have the knowledge and experience to define and address local problem.
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    Collaboratively reimagining teaching and learning
    (Open Book Publishers, 2023) Fabian, Flora; Harle, Jonathan; Kalimasi, Perpetua; Kilonzo, Rehema; Lamaro, Gloria; Luswata, Albert; Monk, David; Ngowi, Edwin; Nzegwu, Femi; Sikalieh, Damary
    In 2020, the African Regional Forum on Sustainable Development proclaimed Africa would only attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) if “universities in Africa collaborate in research, teaching and community or societal engagement” (Ligami, 2020). In 2022, the UNESCO World Higher Education conference called on universities to “reshape ideas and practices in higher education to ensure sustainable development for the planet and humanity” (UNESCO, 2022). While there are regular calls for African universities to improve their teaching, finding ways to do this within the resources and the available time in already stretched institutions, at the scale required, have proven elusive. This chapter is a reflexive exercise, discussing the work of an international partnership, Transforming Employability for Social Change in East Africa (TESCEA), that aimed to reshape habits of teaching and learning in institutions of higher education.1 We, as TESCEA partners and authors of this chapter, hope that our example can make a significant contribution towards understanding how change can happen in higher education, and particularly in resource-constrained settings.
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    Vocational education and training for African development: a literature review
    (Informa-Taylor & Francis, 2019-11-05) McGrath, Simon; Ramsarup, Presha; Zeelen, Jacques; Wedekind, Volker; Allais, Stephanie; Lotz-Sisitka, Heila; Monk, David; Openjuru, George; Russon, Jo-Anna
    The SDGs mark the clearest global acceptance yet that the previous approach to development was unsustainable. In VET, UNESCO has responded by developing a clear account of how a transformed VET must be part of a transformative approach to development. It argues that credible, comprehensive skills systems can be built that can support individuals, commu nities, and organisations to generate and maintain enhanced and just livelihood opportunities. However, the major current theoretical approaches to VET are not up to this challenge. In the context of Africa, we seek to address this problem through a presentation of literatures that contribute to the theorization of this new vision. They agree that the world is not made up of atomized individuals guided by a “hidden hand”. Rather, reality is heavily structured within political economies that have emerged out of contestations and compromises in specific historical and geographical spaces. Thus, labor markets and education and training systems have arisen, characterized by inequalities and exclusions. These specific forms profoundly influence individuals’ and communities’ views about the value of different forms of learning and working. However, they do not fully define what individuals dream, think and do. Rather, a transformed and transformative VET for Africa is possible.
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    Interrogating the agency and education of refugee children with disabilities in Northern Uganda: A critical capability approach
    (National Children's Bureau and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2023-10-17) Monk, David; Walton, Elizabeth ; Madziva, Roda ; Opio, George ; Kruisselbrink, Annemaaike ; Openjuru, George Ladaah 
    This paper draws on empirical evidence from a 3-year research project in Northern Uganda examining the educational experiences of refugees with disabilities. The authors present the compounded and interrelated challenges children with disabilities and their families face as they navigate their educational experiences and seek out opportunities to live well. The authors seek to make a contribution towards improving educational experiences by first highlighting compounding challenges faced by refugee children living with disabilities and their families and related policy gaps that have ramifications for refugee children's access to education in particular, and second by expanding discourse about refugee children with disabilities agency in relation to these liminal gaps and the impact the gaps have for accessing education. The authors use Powell and McGrath's(in Skills for human development: Transforming vocational education and training, Routledge, 2019; Handbook of vocational education and training, Springer, 2019) concept of critical capabilities and relationality, to expand Klocker's (in Global perspectives on rural childhood and youth: Young rural lives, Routledge, 2007) notions of thick and thin agency and to interrogate refugee children living with disabilities' agency in relation to education opportunities and rights.
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    Engaging in a Movement of Cognitive Justice at the Gulu University K4C Hub, Uganda
    (Africa Education Review, 2023) Monk, David; Aber, Gloria; Lamwaka, Alice Veronica; Odoch, Martin; Openjuru, George L.
    The Gulu hub is an initiative of the Gulu University under the Knowledge for Change (K4C) initiative of the UNESCO Chair in Community Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education. The hub’s work is linked to the university’s mandate “for community transformation” oriented toward serving the geographic space of Northern Uganda. It is a somewhat unique hub, because it does not have formal space within the university, and most of the hub’s activities are generated through informal community partnerships and networks.
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    Revisiting VET research paradigms: Critical perspectives from the South
    (Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 2023-11-16) Monk, David; Molebatsi, Palesa; McGrath, Simon; Metelerkamp, Luke; Adrupio, Scovia; Openjuru, George; Robbins, Glen; Tshabalala, Themba
    This paper reflects on a large multisite funded VET research project conducted by a large and diverse research team. Reflecting on two of our case studies, from Uganda and South Africa, we consider both the need for broadening the VET research agenda to incorporate more research on non-formal sites of vocational learning and work, and the imperative of continued critical reflection on modalities of researching the formal sphere. What we offer is a very fallible attempt to open up the debate about the future of VET research further through, we believe, a critical reading of some of our failures as well as successes in trying to ground our research ethically, ontologically and axiologically and not just methodologically. We advocate, where possible, a radical embeddedness of VET research in communities, whilst acknowledging that this is applicable only to some parts of a comprehensive VET research agenda. We also acknowledge that employers and the state are also legitimate stakeholders who should be part of research but point to the need for a more critical reflection into the patterns of power implicit in researching with/on these constituencies. We believe that our reflection on our successes and failures in these two cases and the project as a whole offers useful provocations regarding ways of making VET research more reflective of diverse settings, less extractive from those being researched and more equal in the participation of members of the research team from the South