16:00 - 16:20
2.A.1 Forging Learning Links between the Academe and the Community
Portia P. Padilla
University of the Philippines, Philippines

A learning gap between the rich and the poor exists in Philippine society. The call to make education relevant to individual and societal needs is resounding and urgent. Thus, the Reading Education department in the College of Education of the University of the Philippines works towards bridging this gap in collaboration with the community-based Learning Links Center for Alternative Education. Because of the primary role of literacy in learning and the significant difficulties that many poor children experience in literacy acquisition and development, the partners have focused on helping children to develop independent reading skills, love for reading, and eventually, a passion for learning. Through this collaboration, the children in the Center are guided by informed pre-service and in-service teachers in their journey toward literacy development and empowering education. Meanwhile, students enrolled in the Reading Education department (at both undergraduate and graduate levels) are able to contextualize and critique theories, and consequently adapt methods, strategies, and materials that spring from such analysis, to make them more relevant. Both institutions continuously improve on their programmes to make them more responsive to their respective learners' needs.

 

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16:20 - 16:40
2.A.2. Developing Sustainable Communities in Thailand through Participatory Design
Siriporn Peters
King Mongkut's Institute of Technology, Thailand

This paper reports on a research project which focused on assisting disadvantaged and disabled people in communities to become empowered and gain self-esteem leading to better community development. The methodology of this research is ethnographic and participatory design involving 200 participants in four communities in the central region of Thailand. The research project was successful in developing communities. The communities joined a partnership with KMITL University and the local government and are keen to undertake further community action in order to develop as sustainable communities in the future.

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16:40 - 17:00
2.A.3. Sustainable Inclusive Practices: A Collaborative Effort
Lori Bradshaw, Royal University for Women, Bahrain
Brent Elder, Kellogg School, USA

In an effort to establish sustainable inclusive practices in families, schools, the workplace and communities, a people-centred approach was used to initiate the first steps in the inclusive process. This paper reports on a collaborative project initiated in recognition of the need for families and individuals with disabilities in Bahrain to gain equal access to schools, community life and the workplace. Public focus groups were held; on-site training carried out, and in-home collaborations were conducted. Anecdotal records, taped recordings, semi-structured interviews, and videotaped recordings were employed as data sources. Through this process, it was concluded that in order to begin and sustain inclusive practices in Bahrain, successes and challenges needed to be shared, on-site training needs to be aimed specifically at the needs of the target environment, and the team needed to start small (e.g. one school, one work site, one student, one family at a time) and grow from there. Recommendations are made to ensure sustaining this development and expanding its growth over time in collaboration with intuitions of higher learning.

Download the paper (pdf, 90kb) and presentation (pdf, 230kb)