After participating in the 2019 Education Collaborative Annual Convening Dr. Kwame Asamoah Debrah, Development & Research Officer at Kibi Presbyterian College of Education (KPCE), was particularly interested in how Ashesi University’s honour system‘s was implemented both inside and outside the classrooms.
“At KPCE, our mission is to train teachers and students to show integrity and become advocates for it,” he shared. “However, we don’t have a specific ethics and values training curriculum to support this mission. So to address this gap, we engaged the Education Collaborative to help us design and strengthen our ethics and value systems at KPCE.”
Through its mentorship program, the Education Collaborative provides the avenue for institutions like KPCE to learn from other higher education institutions that have successfully implemented the structures they want to build. In designing their own honour system, KPCE received guidance from Ashesi to craft a program that works for their context.
As part of the mentorship journey, Ashesi’s Student Life Engagement team, which oversees student’s activities on campus, hosted KPCE students, staff, and faculty in a 3-day workshop focused on conversations on ethics and leadership.
“Working with KPCE, we have begun a journey to explore areas and avenues on their campus where integrity and leadership structures and processes can be incorporated or strengthened,” shared Nina Pels, Assistant Director, Student Life and Engagement, Ashesi University. “After this training, we hope that KPCE begins to have community-wide conversations to develop structures to make upholding integrity a collective responsibility.”
During the sessions, facilitators engaged KPCE students, staff, and faculty on how they could apply the lessons they learned in their institution. The 3-day training ended with a debate led by KPCE student leaders on the essence of the honour system within their community.
“The workshop has been insightful, and we are looking forward to incorporating the lessons from Ashesi’s academic and social integrity systems,” Dr. Asamoah shared. “The lessons will feed into our student council constitution, handbook and the institution’s strategic plan. I hope that the structures we develop become a framework for other teacher training colleges to learn from.”
Learn about the Education Collaborative mentorship program.
