5 The Gambia's NYSS Partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM)

The paper examines the dynamics of The Gambian National Youth Service Scheme (NYSS) founded in 1996 through the efforts of Nigeria’s National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Scheme. Though modeled after the NYSC, it has ventured into things NYSC has not. One of these was its most recent partnership with the IOM to curb recurrent illicit migration of The Gambian youths. The questions are, has this aspect of Nigeria-The Gambia history been documented? Has Nigerian Scheme gone into partnership with the IOM in the enterprise like The Gambian counterpart? Since its establishment, how many times has NYSC adjusted to changing realities? In what theoretical contexts could one frame the argument of the NYSS/ IOM partnership and what lessons does that holds for NYSC and similar youths’ services in Africa in the century? In addressing the problem, the paper adopts the qualitative method of historical research and gleans on evidence from diverse sources. It foregrounds its argument on the ideas of the National Youth Service as “Moral Equivalent of War”, “Service- Learning” and “A Way of Strengthening Ties among the People of the World” espoused by William James, John Dewey, and Rosenstock-Huessy. It concludes by charging NYSC and similar services to adjust to meet the current challenges of African youth and society

The Possibilities of Sustaining Community of Practice Cop in Selected Schools in Karachi

The beginning of the twenty-first century brought a lot of changes in the educational world. Now learning is not considered as an individual activity as Lave and Wenger do not view learning as an individual cognitive processing, but as a process of participation in communities of practice. Now learning is considered not an individual activity but communal. It means everybody is the member of community. There are lots of professional development programmes conducted for schools improvement, but there are few outcomes due to several reasons. One reason could be that these programmes can not fulfill the requirements of contextual need. The second reason could be that teachers could not translate that learning into practice due to difference in context. Keeping these challenges in mind educationists introduced a school-based approach that is called Community of Practice (COP) being in which school teachers can share their concerns, successes, and challenges in their own context and learn from each other. The purpose of this research is to see if COP has been understood in Pakistani schools, what has been the process of COP and how it can be sustained as one of the approaches for school improvement. The study was undertaken in two schools, one is private and the other one is a government school. The concept of COP was introduced by AKU- IED for around 4 to 6 schools in Karachi. This study also explores how COP helped teachers (PDTs), head teachers and IED team members to enhance their understanding about this new concept as well as their own professional growth. It also highlights some of the factors, which help teachers to improve themselves and some factors, which hinder their work. This study also gives some recommendations and suggestions for creating COP in schools as well as sustaining it, as one of the best approaches to school improvement.