DRAFT: 10 December, 1996

The Pitt/Bosnia/UNICEF team is currently supporting four learning centers (Sarajevo, Tuzla, Zenica, Gorazde) and wants to double the number as quickly as possible with a goal of one in each canton. They want these centers to support the rapid development of the teaching profession and to contribute to the development of a civic and economic base within each that can support as best as is possible a sustainable education system. They believe that it is critical that these learning centers be leveraged with resources in other cantons, with federal resources and with international resources, preferably simultaneously.

Their current idea is to make the learning centers cantonal hubs for an intercantonal, federation and international network for education information about professional, civic and economic development. The people developing the centers are the key Muslims and Croats in Bosnian teacher education in the federation. It is the only working strategic alliance across the Muslim and Croat communities that exists across all cantons.

UNICEF wants these centers to provide nonpolitical and technically competent crosscantonal links. If they are successful, they should consider extending the network offer to the Republika Srpska. They are supported by international expertise in educational planning, finance and policy, teacher education, supervision and assessment. The international team leaders have also made important contributions to the field of 'active learning,' a pedagogy that focuses on self-reliant and cooperative learning for civic responsibility and economic innovation.

Responsible Education Networks: Personal Learning, Rapid Access Teaching requires complex professional judgment constructed over a lifetime of intense study and practice. A major task for open societies in the twenty-first century will be to better understand how children and adults learn to construct meaning from personal experience. The challenge will be to help people learn to be aware of their own schema and language so they can design meaning in ways that respect the contradictory but creative tensions of individual voice and community legacy.

Teaching is a profession, and as such, is dedicated to the understanding of the unique experience of critical aspects of the larger world (medicine, law, religion). Today's teachers face the daunting task of learning both the common and the unique 'languages' not only of their students, but also of their colleagues in local and international communities. Compounding this complexity is a professional responsibility to help students learn to situate and negotiate their personal meaning-making in relationship with others. The ethics of professions are collegial and contribute to a sense of ownership, to a responsible creative freedom and to a duty to the welfare of current and future generations. The ethic of teaching focuses on the responsible interdependence of personal and collective learning. It challenges notions of command and control by titular authority derived from tradition or natural law.

At the core of education is the highly personalized learning of children and adults trying to make sense of their lives. Both within and beyond the classroom, each child and adult brings to their decisions an exquisitely complex personal 'sense-making.' This sensemaking takes the form of 'scheme' constructed from the interpretation of experience through assumptions, attributions and expectations. These schema then need to be negotiated with others who have different schema. Out of these negotiations may emerge individual and collective 'language' for the interpretation of experience. Schema are constructed foremost from each person's unique experiences within their families and their communities, and then by 'outside' contact with significant others, such as teachers.

Internet technology is a particularly intriguing example of how personal learning can be supported by rapid access telecommunications networks. The introduction of Internet technology, however, without education for its responsible and creative use may lead to the extension rather than the transformation of bully cultures of missionary zeal or ruthless merchandising. GINIE juxtaposes the needs for rapid access to information technology with learning through personal sense-making, emerging as networks of education networks for collegial relationships that support responsible learning communities through self-reliance and mutual assistance.

Bosnia faces unique problems in the reconstruction of its education system.

1. The war seriously damaged the education profession, as many teachers left the country or were killed. Many untrained people became teachers in the war schools.
2. The financing of the education system was devolved first from a Yugoslavian national system to a much smaller, Bosnian national system during the war. Now, the Dayton Accord mandates further decentralization to the cantonal level. This major shift in governance is not supported by existing expertise, a stable economic base or capital and technological resources. These new narrow taxbases are highly unstable and will be unable to adequately support public systems of education, at least in the foreseeable future.

1. A lack of capital for education investment in both private and public sectors.
2. Inadequate and unstable cash flows to cover recurrent costs.
3. A struggle with obsolete finance and governance systems.
4. Poorly aligned, badly fragmented and undercapitalized information systems.
5. A lack of access to low-cost, high-quality, teacher-designed curriculum and professional development materials available through Internet technology.
6. A lack of access to translation services needed to use and to share Internet materials and discussions.

1. A withdrawal of public sector investment.
2. A misalignment between political and economic boundaries and a subsequent incoherence in intergenerational education investments and economic return.
3. Fluid subnational and transnational migration patterns that break the generational investment/return cycles of community-supported schools.
4. Competing political and economic ideologies that impede, not enhance civil and innovative societies.
5. Tensions with minority economic communities.

The GINIE team currently works in partnership with the Pitt/Bosnia program which is currently engaged in two interlocking projects:

• participatory planning for the renewal of teacher education; and
• the design of cantonal level education centers that support professional development through 'active learning,' a pedagogy used internationally to encourage self-reliance, cooperative learning and innovation.

The cantonal-level education center project, sponsored by UNICEF, is to support the development of four centers. The plan is to eventually establish a center in each canton. These centers will have some features in common, but will be constructed to support individual settings. There are five central features of the plan for technological capacity building for the centers.

The first will be the need for both intercantonal and federal communication so that the centers can learn from each other and from the federal ministry's support services.

The second will be the need for 'appropriate' telecommunications technology. Appropriate technology means that which is feasible and which best leverages scarce resources. Computers in some cantons may need to installed with their own reliable energy source. Should low-band with telephone lines be installed, or would it make more sense to run T 1 or T3 lines? What about a mobile computer lab van with satellite access for more remote areas where transportation is still limited? Scanners may be needed for desktop publishing that can support the creation of local teaching materials and income generating possibilities.

As rapidly as possible, the centers need to be linked not only to each other, but also to international networks for professional, civic and economic development. Each center must develop an infrastructure plan that begins with the ownership and control of the energy supply and moves forward into the classroom and out into the community. Planning must be feasible and include power sources, support and backup, support equipment (copiers, telephones..) hardware, software, training, maintenance, supporting materials (printers need paper), depreciation allowances, as well as institutional management practices to generate policies for investment, use and evaluation.

The third will be the need to develop 'entrepreneurial' technology for self-funding opportunities and the development of a communications infrastructure. ' Entrepreneurial' technology means that which can contribute to a self-funding system for maintenance and upgrades. The centers are to be situated in a collapsed economy, so educational investments need to contribute to economic renewal. The centers build on the networks of professionals who are keenly aware of their lack of financial resources, not only in their own cantons, but throughout the federation. These centers may be able to create opportunities to contribute to cash generation in a barter economy. For example, centers with their own power generation source may be able to leverage off-peak time use.

Technology needs to support cantonal and federal efforts to improve educational quality and generate self-reliant funding. For example, a working local telephone line might be used to create communications services in a barter economy. Desktop publishing could not only provide opportunities for the creation of teaching materials, it might also be used to for student/ community created flyers advertising local goods and services available for trade. Money earned from flyers could be invested in newspapers and commercial printing. Income thus generated could be leveraged for the development of a radio station that lowers the information and transactions costs of local trade and civic responsibility.

Why not a TV station? Why not have education centers generate income for the community by being the local Interred provider or part of a public/private partnership? What about private/public partnerships in the training of students to repair technology and the development of apprenticeships for startup businesses like community banking?

The fourth will be the need to link student learning to business startups. The centers could act as innovation centers that could help generate spin-off businesses. Active learning as a pedagogy is particularly well-suited to the development of apprenticeships and business startups. Students, by taking responsibility for their own learning are encouraged to move beyond the formal classroom to learn in informal settings. They are also asked to create products that are useful to others. The flexibility of cooperative and more individualized learning begins to move teachers away from the sole use of textbooks to locally generated materials that can responsibly reflect community settings.

The fifth will be the need to support English as a commercial language. US participation in the program can provide a strength in this area. The teaching of English as a commercial language can also serve as source of income-generation for the centers.

The linking of technology, learning and income generation offers interesting new possibilities for the responsible development of education, communities and telecommunications technology in BiH. There are many good examples of professional and community development work done in other countries that could be brought to bear on the situation in BiH. GINIE could help to provide US and international networks of information and expertise to support these efforts.

1. Intercantonal and federation professional planning and development

 

2. Institutional financial planning and community development

 

3. International outreach

 

4. Intercantonal professional planning and development
   
   Coordinate efforts to sustain professional participatory planning teams
   
   Support current and planned efforts in active learning

 

5. Institutional financial planning and community development
   
   Support professional participatory planning team efforts to describe cantonal level planning conditions (certification, assessment, curriculum, etc.)
   
   Support cantonal learning centers efforts to construct institutional fiscal stability

 

6. International outreach
   
   Support links to low cost teaching and learning materials
   
   Support links to education professionals

The decentralized system of intercantonal learning centers will require a tightly coordinated and strongly supported technical backup system. There are three possibilities for its development.

The first is to embed a mirror site within the federal Ministry of Education which would then be responsible for not only funding it but providing technical support. The second would be to locate it in a nongovernmental organization that would be responsible both for technical support and for developing public/private partnerships for self-funding. The third is to locate it within an international agency which acts as support in the post-crisis period, and helps ease the transition into a more vibrant economy that can support a healthy mix of governmental and nongovernmental organizations.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach. The important thing to consider that BiH has unique conditions which make it difficult to 'transplant' past practices for humanitarian assistance and economic development.

1. Government

• Strengths

• Weaknesses

2. Non-profit organization

• Strengths

• Weaknesses

3. International agency focus with government and NGO partnerships

• Strengths

• Weaknesses

The BiH government faces education funding requirements of epic proportions. The four major concerns are recurrent costs for teacher salaries, school reconstruction, teacher education and technology. It will be very difficult for the cantonal and federal ministries to support all four at needed levels. It might make sense in the short to mid-term to assign salaries to the cantons, reconstruction and teacher education to the federal levels, and technology to government/NGO/private co-funding partnerships. This means that donor investments can still be made for all four needs, it just helps focus the direction of financial development.

Other countries facing decentralization have had to generate complex income streams to replace the single one that dried up. BiH will be unable to return to its pre-war public commitment to public education. International agencies can help create a legacy by creating high tech centers for their own use, which they then transfer to nationals as conditions permit.

Longer term, agency cooperation for a 'generative technology legacy' would begin at the first intervention. Agencies would co-operate in their investments to create a technological 'momentum' during the transition from economic collapse to economic renewal.

For example, refugee camps could establish satellite communications links. This may be useful in tracking relatives and helping keep children secure so they can learn. Children can learn to build, maintain and run print shops and low-power radio stations which can help support a barter economy. Children who are repatriated face similar problems.

The idea is to generate income by the leveraged use of education and technology. Children can learn to be literate, and how to use their literacy to create resources. Each use of appropriate technology can be used to help finance more sophisticated access. For example, repatriated children and families may learn how to generate income from network marketing.

In keeping with its collegial ethic, the GINE team strategy encourages the development and ownership of and contribution to in-country mirror sites. Bosnian partners would design develop and maintain their own in-country education networks for professional, civic and economic development. GINIE grows through a strategy of externalization of technology and information. GINE's distributed information systems support the development of self-reliant (where possible), interdependent partners.

Phase I: Establish a Mirror Site (see above)

(Do this immediately-three months) Seek funding for a GINE mirror site and training. Establish a GINE partnership with UNICEF/ BiH for strong technological support capacity. (Could use existing UNICEF facilities?)

Phase II: Develop Intercantonal and Federation Links (six months to a year)

Design an appropriate configuration for a network that links internally twenty to thirty computers in each of the four learning centers and then a network that links the centers to each other and to a GINE mirror site. (Internet access essential, band-with as wide as possible)

Phase III: Extend intercantonal and federation network to Republika Srbska, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Albania, etc..to create regional network (two to four years)