Development education in Higher Education through voluntary student societies: decolonising a hidden curriculum

With a decolonial critique I acknowledge that community-university partnership projects take place in a context of the existing global system organised by modern/colonial institutions that are “inherently violent and unsustainable” (Stein & da Silva, 2020, p. 548). <br> <br>The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the community-university partnership experiences of both student volunteers and the wider higher education stakeholders engaged in award-winning international student society projects on four campuses.

Purposive sampling of student-led Societies nationwide who received national recognition for their work in international partnerships was conducted. In-depth semi-structured interviews, social media posts, YouTube videos, artwork posters, award application forms and other written documents provided the oral, visual and written data analyzed in this study. Development education, often interchanged with global citizenship education (GCE), provides the framing of analysis.

More specifically, the works of Andreotti (2006, 2012) guide this study’s exploration into GCE opportunities in the academy’s extracurricular activity, voluntary student Societies. Andreotti’s (2006) heuristic of “soft” versus “critical” GCE provides multiple entry ways into understanding what is being learned within an education programme, in this thesis what is being learned in the hidden curriculum of Societies (p. 46).

Further articulations in Andreotti’s (2012) “HEADSUP” framework include the guiding concepts of hegemonic, ethnocentric, ahistorical, depoliticised, salvationism, uncomplicated solutions and paternalism, providing the orientation in this study to guide my interpretations (p. 2). Taken together “critical” GCE and the “HEADS UP” frameworks are a lens through which to engage with the deconolonisation of higher education. <br> <br>The study’s major findings include the following: First, award winning student volunteers’ international community-university partnership projects indicate moments of decolonisation but are largely rooted in charitable and “soft” global citizenship education practices indicating at times a depoliticised, ahistorical, salvationsist, uncomplicated and paternalistic engagement (Andreotti, 2006, 2012).

Second, there are moments that shape, resist, decolonise the hidden curriculum, as stakeholders engaged in student-led community-university partnership projects express their exasperation with being under-resourced and under-trained to explore alternative learning outcomes that might reflect “critical” GCE practices (Andreotti, 2006). Third, characteristics of some national award programmes privilege “soft” global citizenship education benchmarks like personal growth, fundraising, awareness raising, rather than social activism, a component of GCE that explores critical thinking and willingness to challenge the status quo (Andreotti, 2006; Biesta, 2009a).

Overall, this study offers a deeper conceptualization of student volunteering programmes within international community-university partnership projects. <br>