UEW Lecturer Wins £23,000.00 Grant from ESRC

A lecturer at the Department of Geography Education, University of Education, Winneba (UEW), Dr. Benedict Arko has won a grant of £23,000.00 from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), UK’s largest funder of economic, social, behavioural, and human data science.

He won the grant in collaboration with Dr. Daniel Kyereko of the Department of Education at the University of York in the United Kingdom (UK).

The funding was put towards the project “Inclusion and Marginalisation in Ghanaian Schools.”  The project sought to support the rights of migrant children, especially girls, and advocate for their participation in Ghana’s educational system.

It brought onboard teachers, student-teachers, and scholars with an interest in education. Its impact-generating activities included a documentary, stakeholder engagement, workshops, a blog, and policy briefs, among others.

As part of the project, a workshop was held at UEW from Tuesday, 21^st to Friday, 24th March, 2023. It brought together experts, teacher trainees, and educators to discuss the difficulties migrant children experience in accessing education. It also provided opportunities for teacher trainees to research solutions to their problems and learn from professionals and educators who have dealt with similar challenges.

The workshops for teachers focused on the research results of the project. They included research presentations, field observations, and opportunities for educators to exchange ideas and best practices for dealing with migrant children.

At each stage of the planning and execution of the ESRC-funded project, Dr. Arko was very instrumental. At the proposal stage, he was mainly responsible for making the case for using the UEW as a ‘one-stop shop’ for reaching a good part of the key stakeholders to whom the research findings would be relevant.

As the premier education university in Ghana, UEW had students and teachers pursuing various courses in education who would find the results of the study relevant to the course of their work. He made a strong case in the research proposal for the use of both undergraduate and postgraduate students from the Departments of Basic Education and Geography Education as target groups for dissemination.

Moreover, being the collaborator stationed in Ghana, Dr. Arko was responsible for the preparatory work leading to the implementation of the project, including liaising with various stakeholders such as the university management, the Directorate of Research Innovation and Development, and colleagues with expertise in the subject matter who were brought on board as resource persons.

Dr. Arko coordinated the work of all the human resources involved in the project to ensure its successful implementation.