Anchoring transformative education initiatives in HE - a qualitative investigation of an international branch campus in Dubai

The purpose of the study is to advance understanding into how the conceptual nature of transformative pedagogy of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) can be anchored within the internationalised, neoliberal market environment in which higher education (HE) is delivered. This will be explored with a metamodernist lens and the prevalent, substantive theories of management models and organisational learning (Ricciardi et al, 2021). It is inspired by the author’s personal experience as an “insider" at an international branch campus (IBC) of a British higher education institute (HEI) in the ascending education hub of Dubai. It is further motivated by the researcher’s personal belief in the social obligation of educators to not only enhance the employability and transferable skills of the individual student, but to impart knowledge valuable to help identify solutions to community problems such as inequality, poverty and climate change, and others identified within the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The study arises at a time where two seemingly unrelated, but observably complementary phenomena are seen to be maturing and coinciding. The first, an emerging global movement led by the UN through the Education 2030 programme, which is advocating for empowering teachers to reimagine and design their own, locally relevant curricula, henceforth described as a “transformative” approach (Mogren & Gericke, 2019 p. 4). And the second, the maturing of the IBC to a position of academic renown independently of the home campus. The research is designed to present a toolkit of anchoring strategies and expand upon those proposed by Mogren and Gericke (2019), through semi-structured interviews from practitioners within the same IBC of renown. It is hoped this will contribute to discussions on the transformation of global education policy, curriculum design and to support other transformative and high impact teaching and learning interventions to become more securely protected within an institution’s systems and processes.

The HR Observer: "Essential Strategies For Securing Transformational Initiatives In Growing Organisations" (https://www.thehrobserver.com/indepth/essential-strategies-for-secur...)