Tuesday, March 10, 2015
9:00 am – 1:30 pm - Business Meeting – 2:00-3:00 pm
WHAT IS A GENDER AND EDUCATION ISSUE?
PERSPECTIVES FROM ACADEMICS, PRACTITIONERS AND POLICYMAKERS
REFLECTING ON WHERE WE’VE BEEN, WHERE WE ARE &
WHERE WE WANT TO BE IN 2030
Globally, we are entering the final phase of the post-2015 negotiation process with an emphasis on the need for a transformative agenda that integrates a diversity of views and experiences. In the 2015 GEC Symposium, we acknowledge the spirit of Ubuntu and recognize the necessity for such a worldview in order to help solve the post-2015 gender challenges and the need to understand the complexity of the issues involved. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that we cannot exist as human beings in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness and that what we do not only affects us individually, but it simultaneously affects the whole world. When we do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity. In focusing on the idea of Ubuntu, the GEC recognizes the need to work together across disciplines, academic traditions and borders through a transdisciplinary approach. Such a transdisciplinary approach involves the collaboration of scholars and practioners working together on the post-2015 challenges. Ultimately, Ubuntu embodies the ideas of connection, community, and mutual caring for all.
With the Ubuntu theme in mind, we hope you will join us for a lively interview-style session where a series of generative questions will be posed to our invited guests, representing academic, practitioner and policy communities concerning the past, present and future of gender and education theory, practice and policy. In addition to digging deep into the well of ideas concerning gender and education research and practice on the cusp of a new development agenda, we hope to use this event as an opportunity to reflect on the benefits of bringing together academic and practitioner communities and how such relationships might be strengthened and nurtured going forward. Seeking to generate an interactive discussion, audience members will be invited to pose questions and reflect on the issues and ideas discussed, including questions concerning process in gender and education work. To conclude the event we have invited Vandra Masemann, GEC founder and well-known gender and education scholar to reflect on the question of, “So what?” and to pull together the various ideas and themes generated throughout the morning’s discussions.
Our distinguished participants will include,
- Nora Fyles, Head of the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI) Secretariat
- Nancy Kendall, Educational Policy Studies, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Steve Klees, International Education Policy, University of Maryland
- Joan Osa Oviawe, Grace Foundation
- Vandra Masemann, Adjunct Professor, OISE, University of Toronto, former president of CIES, CIESC and WCCES
AGENDA
9:00 – 9:15 Welcome – GEC CO-Chairs – Halla Holmarsdottir and Carly Manion
9:15-10:15 Interactive discussion with invited guests
10:15-10:30 Break
10:30--11:30 Whole group discussion and reflection on gender and education actors, processes and strategies
11:30--12:30 So what? Pulling together and reflecting on the morning’s ideas and discussions.
12:30-1:30 Luncheon (all welcome)
2:00-3:00 Business Meeting
