What do they need to know? Core skills for postgraduate development studies students

Abstract

Despite offerings at most universities, development studies in Australia does not have a professional body nor an academic association to prescribe core skills and standards, or to facilitate discussions about curriculum requirements and core competencies of graduates. This article analyses postgraduate coursework programmes focused on international and/or community development at 10 universities in Australia. It examines the faculty or school in which the programme is located, the core competencies the programmes aim to instil in graduates and how each programme is framed. In particular, it examines which skills have been defined as core requirements in line with the new Australian Qualifications Framework. The research found that, across Australia, development studies alternatively focuses students on critical thinking and understanding the history of ‘development’ or on teaching the practical skills (such as project and finance management) needed as development workers. We argue that the discipline needs to think more about core competencies and engage more actively in attempts to decolonise development studies teaching.

More than Knowledge Transfer? Alumni Perspectives on the Value of Postgraduate Study for International Development

“…Existing literature that has engaged with the teaching of development in higher education, has pointed to a perceived tension between a focus on theory and critical engagement, and a focus on more applied or practice-linked skills seen as being required for employment within the development industry (Denskus & Esser, 2015; Engel & Simpson Reeves, 2018; Sims 2018; Woolcock, 2007), sometimes linked to wider critical discussions about the value and purpose of development, and development studies teaching, in the context of the decolonial project (Rutazibwa, 2018). Our study, through attending to the individual narratives of students who come to the study of education and development from a range of very different backgrounds, helps shed light on the importance of understanding the ways in which students’ own positionality, and what it is that they bring with them to their Master’s programmes, shapes not only their engagements with academic study but also the extent to which they are able to develop and sustain forms of critical reflection and transformative practice as they move out of the academic space and develop their careers in the development sector.…”

“…Some of this work has looked at the implications of decolonizing development education in relation to pedagogic processes and curriculum, and the politics of historical, cultural and social representation (Langdon, 2009, 2013; Molope & Mekoa, 2018; Spiegel et al, 2017; Rutazibwa, 2018), emphasizing the need for development studies to ‘engage with the crucial issues of epistemology, being, and power that maintain the present asymmetrical global relations’ (Ndlovi-Gatsheni, 2012, p. 51). Another strand has been concerned with the relationship between academic learning and the development of ‘skills’ for development, looking critically at the contents and processes of development studies programmes and what ‘skills’ development practitioners are perceived to need (Denskus & Esser, 2015; Engel & Simpson Reeves, 2018; Sims 2018; Spratt, 2015; White & Devereux, 2018). Such studies have explored the potential and challenges of building closer connections between academic learning and development practice (Hammersley et al, 2018; Langdon & Agyeyomah, 2014; Woolcock, 2007).…”

“…Such studies have explored the potential and challenges of building closer connections between academic learning and development practice (Hammersley et al, 2018; Langdon & Agyeyomah, 2014; Woolcock, 2007). They have also drawn attention to the perceived tension between the need for technical ‘skills’, linked to concerns around employability, and for more critical perspectives on development in postgraduate programmes (for example, Engel & Simpson Reeves, 2018; White & Devereux, 2018).…”

‘Making Strange’: Discourse Analysis Tools for Teaching Critical Development Studies

“…Some recent papers consider the challenges arising specifically in international development studies. ‘A critical theory foundation … is needed to build reflective and adaptive practitioners, particularly in the context of a rapidly changing geopolitical environment’, argue Engel and Reeves (2018: 213; see also Sims, 2018). However, there are dangers of teaching blocks of critical theory in uncritical ways, as scripts to memorize and repeat.…”

Teaching development studies in times of change

“…Such complexity of change within the international development arena is paralleled by equally dramatic shifts within the higher education sector. Over recent decades, student numbers have exploded to exceed 150 million globally, and are projected to reach 250 million by 2020 (Altbach, 2015: 4, cited in Engel and Reeves, ). The massification of university programmes has seen classroom numbers rise dramatically, while the growing neoliberalisation and corporatisation of higher education has produced increasingly casualised, competitive and precarious workplaces where enhanced efficiency and resource pressures limit educator efforts to provide quality training and knowledge transfer (Jakimow, : 43).…”