Educational cooperation with South African partner: Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) establishes Centre for the Community School (CCS)
The Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), partner university of the University of Oldenburg in Port Elizabeth (South Africa), is setting new standards in the promotion of school development and teacher training. It has now established a Centre for the Community School (CCS), whose director Dr Allistair Witten is a guest of School I - School of Educational and Social Sciences until 9 December.
He will present the institution at a public event organised by the Centre for South-North Educational Cooperation (ZSN) on Wednesday, 7 December at 6.15 pm (Room A 4-4-403, Haarentor campus).
Witten is an internationally recognised expert on school and community work in developing countries. He was a headmaster in Cape Town and was head of the Principals Academy at Harvard University (USA), of which he is still a member. The Oldenburg educationalist Prof. Dr Karsten Speck will discuss approaches in the field of school social work with him. The focus will be on theatre and cultural work as a link between schools and local youth work.
School education for sustainable local development is a focus of the cooperation between the NMMU and the University of Oldenburg. In addition to Speck, the coordinators are biology didactics expert Prof. Dr Corinna Hößle and business education expert Prof. Dr Karin Rebmann. The educationalist Prof. em. Dr Wolfgang Nitsch is also involved in an advisory capacity.
The highlight of the co-operation between the two universities in 2011 was the two-week research stay of an Oldenburg delegation in Cape Province. Three teachers of education, four students and four lecturers and trainers conducted seminars on drama and drama education at the NMMU, participated in the founding of a network for youth cultural work in townships and initiated projects on teacher training research.
Project groups from the University of Oldenburg and the association Jugendkulturarbeit Oldenburg e.V. will support this work in the future. New opportunities are opening up for Oldenburg students to get involved in schools and youth culture projects in Port Elizabeth as interns and in educational action research projects. Two teachers and a didactics lecturer from Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg respectively, who will be in Oldenburg in January/February as guests of the South-North Centre, as well as Dr Annika McPherson (English/Cultural Studies) are involved in the preparation of such internship projects.