College for Technical Teacher Education in Sudan

(http://www.jungk-bibliothek.at)

Robert Jungk developed the method of the Future Workshop together with Norbert Müllert. Their intention with the Future Workshop was to enable citizens to create their own desireable future.

(http://www.unevoc.unesco.org/up/vtec-krt.jpg)

The Future Workshop took palce at at the Vocational Training and Entrepeneurship Center in Halfait El maluk in Khartoum, one of four Vocational Training Centers in Khartoum which are funded by the EU Commision.

The last day of 2011 45 paricipants from different unversities, tehchnical colleges and government bodies started the first day of their two days Future Workshop in a process to form the first College for Tecnical Teacher Education (CTTE) in Sudan.

The Future Workshop was based upon the ideas of the Austrian future researcher Robert Jungk (http://www.jungk-bibliothek.at).

The workshop was the initiation of a development process initiated by the National Council for Technical and Technological Education (NCTTE) in Sudan. The efforts of the NCTTE to form the CTTE are supported by Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Science (http://www.hioa.no/eng) in Norway and its Department of Technical and Vocational Teacher Education founded in a Memorandum of Understanding between the two.

The education system in Sudan is severely unbalanced with a ratio of 97/3 for graduates from academic education compared to technical and technological education. The number of graduates annually from the academic institutions is app. 140 000 of which most enter into unemployment.

Technical and Technological education in Sudan is as elsewhere in need of a revision and the NCTTE was formed with the intention to upgrade technical and technological education in the country.

The purpose of the workshop was a double intention, to introduce the method as such and to form a foundation for the further development of the technical education including establishing a College for Technical Teacher Education.

Out of Date Curriculum and Teaching equals lecturing was the major crtitiques made of today's situation. The explanations are many for the status quo and transforming the teaching practice towards a more student or learning centered one, is a complex task. It was noticed that time was needed for the participants to become really critical. Actually, it did not really happen before time was out.

The efforts of forming utopias was in a way creating the same kind of experiences as the utterings of the critiques. Time was needed to get into the mode of being able to leave the constraints of reality and to express the wish of transforming Sudan's Technical Education to the No One in the World.

Working with the Future Workshop or the Future Creating Workshop is a typical bottom-up process. Some of the participants expressed that even though this was the first time they had taken part in such a bottom-up process it would not be the last.