Assessment, Learning & Teaching Reflections |
Wednesday 14th December
What is sustainable educational impact ? Reflecting on my third visit to Tanzania, I was struck more than ever by the importance of developing sustainability and capacity of learning, as embodied in the proverb ‘Give a man a fish and you’ll feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you’ll feed him for the rest of his life’.
Over four years I have assisted the development and delivery of a new degree course at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre. The approach I have followed is one of working with staff to support curriculum- and staff-development activity, rather than working for staff by writing the new course for them and perpetuating a dependency culture with expectations of and reliance on ongoing overseas support. I spent many hours supervising one of the Tanzanian physiotherapy teachers to gain his MSc in the UK, linking this to development of a more critical, questioning and evidence-based approach to professional practice. It was therefore with considerable pleasure that I was able to sit in on his lecture to a group of final-year students on ‘developing research-based practice’. While this was still ‘chalk and talk’, it encouraged students to question the evidence-base of their practice.
Ieuan Ellis
Associate Dean
Faculty of Health
