Bethlehem – (A. M. Qattan Foundation – 15 September 2018)
In Bethlehem, the Educational Research and Development Programme (ERDP) / A. M. Qattan Foundation has recently offered a course, targeting science teachers, early childhood educators, and members of the teacher centres supervised by the ERDP. The course was part of the preparations for the Science Days Palestine (SDP) 2018 Festival. Revolving around the theme Food Revolution 2050, the SDP 2018 Festival is organised between 22 October and 22 November 2018.
Held over three days, the course comprised three main components: (1) deconstructing and reconstructing the central theme in light of the implications and relations uncovered during the analysis and reconstruction process; (2) writing and reflection as a context of planning of the SDP 2018 Festival activities, leading to the articulation and reflection on these activities; and (3) employing forms of engagement and interaction and using arts to build different forms of presentation and interaction.
The course started with an orientation exercise. Participants introduced themselves, stating their names and presenting the stories associated with them. While participants introduced themselves and their stories, Vivian Tannous, ERDP Researcher, provided a more in-depth focus of the goal of this exercise and drew a link between these stories and objectives of the course. Tannous linked the activity to the importance of opening the theme to the world of things and objects, including cultural repertoires. These should be connected to “I” as an active person and to a life that is capable of being narrated, renewed, experimented, and learned.
Dr. Nader Wahbeh, Science Studio Manager, moderated a discussion about the significance of intellectual and social dimensions in understanding food – the theme of the SPD 2018 Festival. This theme has to be associated with time (history and future) as well as with the Palestinian and global contexts. Then, participants were asked about the reason behind their participation. While some were new, others have participated in the SDP Festival for years. Most participants stated that the reason for their engagement was attributed to the dichotomy between belonging and resistance. They found out that the Festival was reflective of belonging which, in their view, should be visible in education. It also reflected resistance against what should not be incorporated in education. In addition to promoting the perceptions of research, exploration and experimentation, the concepts and causes of education that is isolated from the outside world should be contested.
Wahbeh indicated that the idea of the course was to start a dialogue about the SDP 2018 Festival as a human, social cause with cultural and historical dimensions. The dialogue was intended to bring thinking about the theme to deeper levels and build up a conceptual basis, which represents a common language between teachers and researchers who organise the SDP 2018 Festival.
“The course has been capable of achieving the set goals. Participants managed to view the food theme in relation to their local contexts. They also managed to come up with different forms of presentation and new questions to trigger thinking.” Wahbeh added.
Samar Kirresh, Senior Researcher in the Science Track and Supervisor of the SDP 2018 Festival, presented an overview of research on food as a scientific theme, highlighting its relation to arts. The research overview explored the evolution and implications of concepts, unveiled and employed relations in a semantic context, and introduced relevant sources. More importantly, the review uncovered forms of artistic, practical and procedural representation of these implications and relations which generate from the concepts created about food as a cultural and social theme, issue and context.
The course did not only present this research overview. The endeavour itself turned into a deconstructive research process. Participants deconstructed the research overview once more in order to explore concepts, implications, relations, questions and their evolution, issues and their transformations, sources and their diversity, forms of meaning construction, and ways of representing and presenting the meaning.
The second component of the course provided more in-depth thinking as well as theoretical and practical exploration, which underpins concepts. To this end, the course employed a drama scene, in which participants played the roles of people who trash surplus food. A mother and her children then appear, taking that food from the same dumpster for her family.
The scene turned into a discussion about the theme of consumption and food waste. It was transformed into a context to use writing as a semiotic text and as a discourse with a social dimension. To this avail, exercises were developed, making clear how both forms could be used in planning, articulating and reflecting on the SDP 2018 Festival.
Accounting for the importance using drama in the course, Tannous said: “As a context of interaction with current issues, drama provides a different form for presenting human experience. It unfolds deep and esoteric meanings in human experience. We know that there are hungry people. Still, we continue to waste and trash a large amount of food, as if it were a normal action. However, in the drama scene, participants watched a family (a mother and her children) collecting their food from the dumpster. For participants, placing the behaviour of a hungry human being at this level of visibility uncovered what was hidden in their action, namely, wasting food. The visible behaviour of a hungry human being unveils for us the invisible side of our daily behaviour. This is what drama does; it uncovers the hidden side of our human life.”
Malik Al-Remawi, Manager of the ERDP Languages and Humanities Track, read out, wrote, analysed and reflected on the drama scene together with the participant, using the scene as an exercise to employ writing. In this context, writing was introduced as a critical, narrative, constructive and reflective form, which runs in parallel with other forms of representation and presentation. To this end, images were used, read out and rearranged in multiple forms of symmetry and asymmetry in the context of exploring important themes. These include the media, image and role of women in food production and consumption, impact of the image of women and transformations of their role in the reality of food, invasive and traditional plants in the Palestinian context and their association with colonisation, the future of food, and relation between plants from contemporaneity to proximity and integration. Images were employed, read out and constructed as relations: film, day-to-day experience, writing, and the drama scene.
The last course component involved designing the plan. Transition to this phase was achieved by developing themes and writing about these themes: writing a story or a scenario about what is going on now, what will happen as a genre of advanced narration, and analysing the scenario as a textual context based on a symbolic, indicative structure and as a discourse that functions as a social practice, including a social interaction and practical purposes.
Al-Rimawi was of the view that employing writing and narration in the SPD 2018 Festival planning exercise was a type of setting a personal link between participants and the Festival’s theme. Participants saw and worked on this link as a personal relation, which transforms by means of writing and planning into a social relation. In the relation between participants and their social context, food represents a medium and context for meeting and learning.
Describing the role of narration and writing, Al-Rimawi added: “Here, narration and writing evolve as a form of prior organisation, an imaginary perception of the form of the Festival, or an actual presence through narration. Therefore, work will continue with participants to build the exhibition’s story and narrative in parallel with the track of its development as a plan. This combines narration as a prospect of expectation with planning as a practical experiment in a single track, namely, to design and implement the Festival on one hand, and to prepare participants as social actors and reflective teachers on the other.
The planning phase involved transforming all the theoretical legacy and indicator outcomes into forms of presentation and interaction with the imaginary audience (students, parents and community). Along this vein, participants produced six themes on food, food production, food culture, food waste, food consumption and relevant problems, diversity, edible wild plants, social roles, etc. Participants transformed these themes into tracks of presentation and interaction by building experimentation tables and corners for work within a track of integrated engagement, ensuring that the audience take part in a journey of multiple forms of engagement, participation, and inquiry.
Together with participants, artist Ra’fat Asad employed art forms to help understand the theme. They developed multiple of forms of presentation, combining art as a vision, form and process in building presentation tables and representation tracks. The Science Studio team of researchers and developers also showcased exhibits by developing the dialogue and providing practical potentials to design activities and build presentation methods. Eventually, preliminary outlines were designed, which participants viewed to be a promising springboard to a new festival with a new horizon, as well as a prelude to a continuous narrative-based planning track.
Kirresh stated: “The fact that the course is part of the teacher professional development track adds value by providing teachers with a reflective review of their teaching career. It helps them to rethink about the potential roles they and their students play, and to revisit the relations between education and society, as well as between the school and its surrounding environment. This offers the prospect for new special potentials for teachers’ position and roles and for the school’s position and function.”
According to Kirresh, the course, including its different components, has allowed new potentials to teachers. In particular, it focused on how to explore new roles, tasks and mechanisms to implement the SDP 2018 Festival with students as participants and with visitors. It provided an integrated perception in education. Not only did it introduce the content, but the course also addressed different linkages which integrate with how education is presented or illustrated in a complementary, interactive practical and artistic framework within the festival (the idea of the exhibition built by a curator). The course also managed to develop a new perception among teachers about the Science Studio track, which builds exhibits, exhibitions, and community scientific events.
The SDP 2018 Festival is organised and funded by the Ramallah Municipality, Al Nayzak Organisation for Supportive Education and Scientific Innovation, A. M. Qattan Foundation, Goethe Institut, and French Cultural Centre in partnership with several local institutions.