From Poland to Africa, there are many new and emerging democracies across the globe, and BGSU education faculty are playing an integral part in helping build these new institutions through partnerships and exchanges with local teachers. In return, they are learning more about the countries they work with and about the meaning of democracy itself.

A recently announced grant from the U.S. Department of Education to create CIVITAS Africa will help extend the newest initiative, in South Africa. The two-year grant expands on an existing five-year grant to further the exchange of educators from both countries.

Though CIVITAS Africa will involve several organizations in the United States and the participating African countries, BGSU is the only American university included in the program. BGSU will also include an American partner in Kentucky.

“We’re really delighted about this,” said Alden Craddock, Division of Teaching and Learning (EDTL). “These long-term grants help solidify our progress and relationships with our international partners.”
Craddock, who joined the faculty in the Division of Teaching and Learning in January, is a co-principal investigator for three grants to further civic education in South Africa, Poland and Ukraine. The former director of the civic education program at Ohio State University’s Mershon Center, Craddock directly oversees a project in Ukraine.

“Being at BGSU has allowed us to bring pre-service teachers into the program,” Craddock said, noting that previously only teachers already working had participated.

A core group of relatively new BGSU faculty in the division are spearheading the new civic education projects. All the projects are in different stages of development, Craddock said, from teacher preparation to curriculum development to school reform. A different faculty member has primary responsibility for each partnership although they work in cooperation with each other. John Fischer directs the most established partnership with Poland and Nancy Patterson heads the newest, with Russia.

Sharon Subreenduth is heading up the South African project. Subreenduth, who is from South Africa, also came to BGSU from Ohio State, where she directed an exchange program that brought together young educators from both the United States and South Africa.

Through work with the South African partner, the program has grown from five teachers three years ago to more than 200 this year, and is looking to expand beyond the province in which it is centered. “It’s been developmental, with a series of short-term grants,” Subreenduth said, adding that this longer-term grant will help sustain the effort. The CIVITAS Africa grant, comprising Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa, will focus on the areas of classroom practice, the skills of democracy, pedagogy and ways to approach content in keeping with the national context of each country.

The main focus of the new grant, she said, is to bring both pre-service and in-service teachers from South Africa to BGSU and vice versa. Four EDTL pre-service teachers— two graduate students and two undergraduates—will be visiting South Africa Nov. 25-Dec. 10. They will meet with local university faculty, participate in school observations, visit sites of cultural and historic significance and work with their peers there. They will also observe South Africa’s first Project Citizen Showcase.

Upon their return, the pre-service teachers will also be invited to write a lesson about South Africa to be considered for inclusion in a booklet of lessons for use in American schools. “We’ll participate with our African partners and other places in the U.S. to develop curriculum to teach about Africa,” Subreenduth said.

For both teachers already working and those student-teaching, visiting another country and working with other teachers is “transformative, personally and professionally,” Craddock said. “All the in-service teachers who have gone have come back and rethought their own practices. There’s excitement and enthusiasm on both sides. We want to tap that energy when it comes back here and create the same kind of capacity-building that our partners have.”

Some in-service teachers who were nearing retirement have come back so energized that they have decided to continue teaching, Craddock said. In fact, three winners of various Ohio teaching awards, including this year’s Ohio Teacher of the Year, are longtime participants in the exchange programs.
The inspiration created by civic education is contagious. In Poland, the oldest of the exchanges, for example, “our partners have surpassed us,” Craddock said. “We’re learning a lot more from them now than they are from us.”

Both Craddock and Subreenduth say one of the most rewarding aspects of the partnerships is that now, participants in the respective countries are in dialogue with one another and are sharing what they’ve learned. The CIVITAS grants have funded visits among the partners as well as with the U.S. participants, and “that’s paid off hugely,” Craddock said.

“All our interactions have become much deeper and richer, and have changed the way we perceive the role of the United States in world politics,” said Leigh Chiarelott, chair of the division.

The partner countries have impressed their U.S. counterparts with their boldness and engagement with the concepts of democracy, Subreenduth said. “The U.S. doesn’t interact with democracy as much as people in new democracies. For example, students participating in Project Citizen tackle intense, personal and very controversial topics.”

CIVITAS is administered by the Center for Civic Education and funded by the U.S. Department of Education under the Education for Democracy Act approved by Congress. It is implemented worldwide in cooperation with the State Department.

School of Teaching and Learning * College of Education and Human Development