Abstract:

Brazil's Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) in Natal has been partnering since 2011 with Canada's University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver to design and deliver non-credit courses that advance social learning about metropolitan governance, urban development, and informal settlement. In 2011, an on-line course was jointly delivered to professionals, students, and community members in Natal. In 2012, a field course for non-Brazilians, led jointly by UBC and UFRN, was offered in Natal.

The partnering institutions regard these courses as experimental innovations in capacity building and adult education. The lessons learned from the 2011 on-line course for Brazilian capacity-building were reported in a paper delivered to INTED 2011. This paper presents the context and format of the 2012 field course for Canadians, the lessons learned regarding international education opportunities and constraints, and the implications for shaping university roles in advancing global citizenship.

The context of the 2012 field course consists of two components: the structural conditions of metropolitan development in Brazil generally and in Natal specifically, and the ongoing agency being exercised by UFRN in response. The conditions include weak institutionalization at metropolitan levels, social-spatial exclusion of a great part of the urban population, and attempts from the grass roots and governments at several levels to reduce exclusion through substantive and procedural planning innovations. UFRN's response has been to foster engagement of faculty and students with communities and local governments, and to support collaborative problem solving through its Observatory of the Metropolis.

The format of the field course was designed by UFRN and UBC as an intensive week of site visits to four communities of Natal, in combination with debriefings conducted by informal leaders and professors. The eight non-Brazilian participants were attracted by UBC's Centre for Intercultural Communication through its self-funded certificate program on International Development. All were experienced practitioners of international development. What they sought from this course was an introduction to Brazilian theories and conceptualizations of remedies to social exclusion. Participants' tuition fees covered the course costs.

Lessons learned relate to curriculum design for international field courses provided to adult learners, and for the larger programs of which such courses form a part. More broadly, the 2012 UFRN-UBC field course outcomes, as documented by participants, reveal university opportunities for meeting what appears to be a strong latent demand by adult learners for international education that is both experientially rich and intellectually engaging.

Keywords:

Metropolitan governance, urban development, informal settlement.