The alternative university: lessons from Bolivarian Venezuela
- Date: 29 November 2023
- Time: 12.15pm - 1.15pm
- Location: Room 3.107, 1 West and online (Zoom)
During this seminar, Dr Mariya Ivancheva (Senior Lecturer at Strathclyde Institute of Education) will talk about her research into the decline of the public university. She'll explore how it has dramatically increased under intensified commercialisation and privatisation, with market-driven restructurings leading to the deterioration of working and learning conditions over the last few decades. Based on extensive fieldwork in Venezuela, The Alternative University outlines the origins and day-to-day functioning of the colossal effort of late President Hugo Chávez's government to create a socialist university that challenged national and global higher education norms. Through participant observation, extensive interviews with different groups involved and archival inquiry, Mariya historicises the Bolivarian University of Venezuela, the vanguard institution of higher education reform, and examines the complex, often contradictory policies and practices that turn the alternative university model into a lived reality.
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Reparative futures of education
- Date: 6 December 2023
- Time: 4.15pm - 5.15pm
- Location: Room 4.10, The Chancellors' Building and online (Zoom)
In this talk, Professor Arathi Sriprakash (University of Oxford) will explore how the idea of reparation can help address the injustices of education systems. The idea of reparation requires us to understand the interconnections between past, present and future in the formation of injustice and its repair. It implies that until injustices are actively addressed, they can endure in social institutions – such as education – which also shape lives-to-come. Injustice is not an inevitability in reparative futures of education: these are new, if challenging, horizons of educational theory and practice.
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Mitigating poor literacy skills with technology: evidence from Spain
- Date: 12 December 2023
- Time: 12.15pm - 1.15pm
- Location: Room 4.10, The Chancellors' Building and online (Zoom)
In this seminar, Professor Ismael Sanz (Rey Juan Carlos University) will present a recently published article in which he and his co-authors estimate the effects of a low-cost and scalable computer-assisted learning (CAL) language program on students’ academic performance. The CAL program aims to enhance writing and reading skills using artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to model the cognitive processes of students with learning difficulties, providing content tailored to their academic level. To estimate the effects of the program, they exploit variation in its implementation and adoption across primary schools in the Region of Madrid (Spain) and combine survey data with administrative records on external blindly standardised tests. Professor Ismael will present the findings of this research and discuss its implications for policy discussions on effective strategies to mitigate poor literacy skills in a cost-effective and inclusive manner.