[lg policy] Michigan: Fieldwork in West Africa promotes cultural ties

Sat Aug 8 15:34:13 UTC 2009

Fieldwork in West Africa promotes cultural ties
Aug. 7, 2009

KALAMAZOO--A local contingent of educators, professors, graduate
students and others will be headed to West Africa thanks to an
initiative being coordinated by two professors at Western Michigan
University and with the help of a $70,468 grant.

The Fulbright Hays Group Projects Abroad grant will fund Cultural
Connections: A Transnational Curriculum Development Project, which is
a trans-disciplinary initiative spearheaded by Dr. W.F.
Santiago-Valles, associate professor of Africana studies, and Dr.
Yvette D. Hyter, associate professor of speech pathology and
audiology. The effort is aimed at developing a transnational
curriculum designed to spark critical thinking about the consequences
of globalization and global citizenship.

Visit the Cultural Connections travel blog
http://ciwara.blogspot.com

"We're looking at globalization in a comprehensive sense,"
Santiago-Valles says. "We want people to learn about the comparative
impact of globalization on countries in West Africa and several states
in the Midwest. We're trying to bring the various perspectives--of
researchers, educators and community organizations addressing the
consequences of globalization--into a transnational conversation."

During the fieldwork phase of the comparative research program,
participants will travel to Mali and Senegal. Travel is open to
applicants who are classroom teachers, principals, special education
personnel such as speech-language pathologists, WMU faculty and
graduate students in the humanities, social sciences, health and human
services, area studies and foreign languages.

To be considered for the travel stage to West Africa, candidates must
have completed a pre-departure workshop focused on West Africa and the
Midwestern United States, the consequences of globalization, field
research methods and teamwork. This workshop begins Sept. 10 and
continues every Thursday afternoon for 15 weeks. Candidates also must
be heavily involved in curriculum development as part of their job or
university studies.

Food security and policy is one issue that will be looked at closely,
Santiago-Valles and Hyter say. Though hunger is more of a problem in
West Africa than the Midwestern United States, the existence of food
deserts in large urban areas and food distribution are problems in
both regions of the world. A problem both in West Africa and in the
United States Midwest is the inability to buy fresh foods from local
growers at neighborhood markets, rather than from supermarkets that
import food products from long distances away. According to Mari
Gallagher in "Examining the Impact of Food Deserts on Public Health in
Detroit" in 2007, more than a half million of that city's residents
live in areas where food is not available for purchase every day.

"Food security is an issue of relevance," Santiago-Valles says. "It
connects economic policy, planning and development, the environment,
distribution, many different issues. We want to create a cultural
exchange of ideas to improve food security for both regions of the
world, as an indicator of economic and cultural sovereignty."

Hyter, whose background is in language development and use, wants to
take a close look at language policy and how it impacts education.
Mali, for instance, has some 13 local languages considered of national
usage, but in many ways educators there do a better job bridging
language barriers than their counterparts in U.S. classrooms.

"We will be working with our counterparts to learn how they include
all languages of national usage in instruction regardless of how many
people speak the language," she says. "When children are not educated
in their first language, they frequently struggle academically."

Hyter says West Africa has the upper hand when it comes to native
language use in the classroom. In Mali, for instance, the Ministry of
Education has a whole department, headed by one of the project's
research colleagues, that focuses on teaching using local languages.

Cultural Connections is producing a two-way exchange of information
and ideas and will continue to do so with the field trip. In the end,
the professors hope to produce curriculum that can be used both in the
U.S. Midwest and in West Africa to improve everything from the
teaching of language to instruction about alternatives to credit-based
economic development in both regions of the world. The collection of
teaching units produced will be housed in a central location
accessible to educators in the region. The five curriculum boxes that
have already been produced, in keeping with the Michigan standards,
are currently housed at the Kalamazoo Regional Educational Service
Agency for use by educators across the region.

The pre-departure meetings that begin in the fall will result in the
selection of 12 participants from three U.S. regions for the fieldwork
phase. Santiago-Valles and Hyter hope participants will learn ways to
more effectively incorporate diverse cultural and intellectual
traditions and perspectives into the classroom to better meet the
needs of an increasingly multi-ethnic student population.

"We want the participants in the fieldwork to verify those ideas while
abroad and then apply back here the ones that work best on both sides
of the Atlantic," Santiago-Valles says.

But this bridging of cultures project is not limited to just those
people who participate in the fieldwork phase. The two professors also
want to create an information and documentation center that will
assemble an inventory of written materials that have examined the
impact of globalization since World War II, but whose work has been
excluded from school curriculums. These written materials and
"intellectual traditions" will then be published on the Cultural
Connections Web site.

For more information or to apply for the project, contact Dr. W. F.
Santiago-Valles at (269) 388-3809 or Dr. Yvette D. Hyter at
yvette.hyter at wmich.edu. Visit the program's travel blog at
http://ciwara.blogspot.com.

Media contact: Mark Schwerin, (269) 387-8400, mark.schwerin at wmich.edu

WMU News
Office of University Relations
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5433 USA
(269) 387-8400
www.wmich.edu/news

http://www.wmich.edu/wmu/news/2009/08/004.html
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