The University’s Comparative Education and International Development (CEID) MSc allows students to develop their dissertations while acquiring work experience through a placement with organisations, charities and NGOs from around the world.
Chinchu George, from India, graduated from the course in 2023 but when she found out she was going to Kenya for the first time as part of her placement-based dissertation (PBD), she was anxious and considered pulling out of the trip.
“To be very honest, I was nervous. Even the day before we were going, I was reconsidering travelling to Nairobi but thankfully my lecturer Aliandra Barlete supported me and gave me confidence that I could go.”
Two years later, Chinchu is one of many students who grew in confidence due to completing the programme. She now does freelance work for NGOs and has set her sights on opening her own school in the future.
“The networking opportunity you gain from a PBD is amazing and the staff put you in contact with a lot of people from different NGOs and other educational organisations,” she says. “It would be difficult to gain these contacts yourself.”
Incorporating student feedback
The CEID programme was set up two years ago by Dr Will Smith, Senior Lecturer in Education and International Development at the Moray House School of Education and Sport, to offer students placement-based dissertations with international development organisations from different parts of the world.
When Dr Smith joined the University six years ago, CEID was a pathway embedded in a much larger MSc Education course. He explains: “It didn’t have the same flexibility and freedom that it could have had as its own separate programme.”
Dr Smith and his colleagues started brainstorming what a separate CEID programme could look like and took student feedback on board.
“One thing that continually came back from students was the desire to have practical opportunities and a lot of them wanted something similar to an internship,” he says.
“Unfortunately, in a one-year programme, having an internship opportunity is very challenging so we started looking at other ways to offer this type of practical experience for students.
“It’s quite important in the field of education and development to have a sense of where you might go in the future. There are lots of potential careers out there for students, and it’s not usually very clear to students what those are so placement-based dissertations were one of multiple efforts that we put in to try to expose students to practical opportunities and a potential future career.”
Dr Smith credits his colleague Dr Aliandra Barlete, the MSc CEID Dissertation Coordinator, for her role in organising PBDs: “Aliandra helps support and guide the placement organisations and the students, she’s the one negotiating with the Placement and Immigration Offices, as well as supervisors and placement organisations.
“A challenge we face, is that this is a new course and we’re trying to explain the fact that we are recruiting organisations a year in advance for next summer and so Aliandra’s role is different to that of a typical dissertation coordinator in other programmes which aren’t always a full year long and don’t have to navigate different stakeholders.”
Accessible opportunities
On average, 20-30 per cent of CEID students complete a placement as part of their dissertation. The University offers as much funding as possible for travel expenses, an aspect which Dr Smith finds important due to his own experience as a student: “I studied a Masters in Development at the University of Denver in the US before I got my PhD and there were a couple of different opportunities there that I was expected to participate in to complete my two-year degree. There was an opportunity to visit organisations in Washington, DC, but I was in Colorado and I couldn’t afford those unfunded opportunities.
“The CEID programme has embedded funding for accessing travel. We are aware that these types of experiences widen your world view, are key to increasing your network and gaining some of that experience that will get you your initial job in the field, but if you can’t afford to get there it won’t happen.”
A sustainable approach
Before he joined the University, Dr Smith was a senior analyst at UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) where he worked on reports related to the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
He believes PBDs are aligned with the UN’s goal number four titled Quality Education, as well as Climate Action, No Poverty and Gender Equality.
He explains: “Our PBDs are well aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and you can’t really talk about the relationship between education and international development without bringing them up consistently in class and as part of the current discourse.
“Education is really central in driving social and economic development in the country, so a lot of our placement-based dissertations are well aligned with SDG4 on education and all the other sustainable development goals, whether it’s health or economic development, or peacebuilding or partnerships.”
Real-world experience
Current CEID student Aiseosa Eweka-Okera, from the UK, recently acquired first-hand knowledge of real-life challenges, working with the Center of Research and Innovation East Africa (CRI-EA).
Aiseosa’s research topic was on how civic education spreads awareness and impacts women’s voting participation in Kenya. She spent two weeks in Nairobi in May.
She says: “When Aliandra presented the placements, that one really caught my eye. I have experience with African politics from my undergraduate degree in human, social and political science at Cambridge University, and I thought it’d be a great opportunity to investigate something I’ve always been interested in.”
Students wanting to undertake a PBD have to score 60 per cent in their first semester, as well as submit a CV and take part in an interview.
Aiseosa says: “I’m glad I applied because I think I can see the benefits already. I don’t think that people recognise the importance of learning networking as a skill. I met incredible people, and people who want to stay in contact with you, and it’s just opened a wide community that I didn’t have access to.
“This experience has also pushed me outside of my comfort zone. Before you’re allowed to do a placement, there’s a lot that you must prove which pushed me to become more independent and proactive in my studies.”
Dilara Keven, a student from Turkey, was also pushed out of her comfort zone while undertaking her PBD on voter apathy in Kenya ahead of the next election: “I now feel like I can work with any other country in the world, and I can adapt to their situation, learn about their history, their background and why this problem occurred in the first place and how to analyse it.”
She worked with CRI-EA remotely, which presented its own set of challenges: “It limited my research because I had to find participants who had an internet connection. In an online environment there is a level of stress because you don’t know if you will really be able to connect with your participants but after we started our interviews, they were open about the problems they faced.”
Dilara adds: “I was a person that always doubted myself but after this programme, I feel like I can do anything.”
Image credits: Aiseosa Eweka-Okera and Dilara Keven; Moray House image by Paul Dodds
