Learning in the Palaver Hut: The ‘Africa Study Visit’ as teaching tool
| DOI | 10.1177/0263395715616988 |
| Published date | 01 November 2016 |
| Date | 01 November 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Special Section: Teaching Africa and International StudiesGuest Edited by Julia Gallagher (Royal Holloway, University of London) |
Politics
2016, Vol. 36(4) 508 –521
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0263395715616988
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Learning in the Palaver
Hut: The ‘Africa Study
Visit’ as teaching tool
Maria Ambrozy
School of Oriental and African Studies, UK
David Harris
University of Bradford, UK
Abstract
The aim of this article is to assess the experiential learning environment of the African Study
Visit (ASV). It presents a theoretically grounded analysis of the ASV. Although field visits are
not a new phenomenon within Higher Education, they seem, but with few exceptions, to be
considered as an add-on teaching method. By drawing from the experiential learning literature,
we demonstrate that there are sound pedagogical reasons for incorporating field visits like the
ASV into the curriculum as stand-alone components. Thus, the original contribution of this article
is to place the ASV within the experiential learning literature such that the theoretical, practical
and conceptual benefits for students are understood. Its significance is that this article offers a set
of practices from an experiential learning perspective that can be used for deepening the levels of
comprehension of political issues in Africa for international studies students.
Keywords
Africa, politics, study visit, teaching
Received: 19th September 2014; Revised version received: 19th June 2015; Accepted: 19th July 2015
Introduction and theory
The aim of this article is to assess the experiential learning environment of the African
Study Visit (ASV). It presents a theoretically grounded analysis of the ASV, a type of
study visit. What becomes apparent within pedagogical literature is that visits similar to
the ASV are not as common as might be expected (see Higgins et al., 2012; Sachau et al.,
2010; Scarce, 1997; Tan and Chew, 2014; Wright, 2000). Although field visits are not a
new phenomenon within Higher Education, they seem, but with few exceptions, to be
considered as an add-on teaching method. Thus, they are usually treated as an accompa-
nying innovation to more conventionally run modules (Barbezat and Bush, 2014: 191–
196; Cooper et al., 2010). However, in an era when university admissions are increasingly
Corresponding author:
David Harris, Division of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, Richmond Road, Bradford BD7 1DP, UK.
Email: d.harris7@bradford.ac.uk
616988POL0010.1177/0263395715616988PoliticsAmbrozy and Harris
research-article2016
Special Section Article
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