The Value and Potential Pitfalls of Study Trips in Challenging Euro-Centric Perspectives on Early Years Provision and Child Well-being in the Gambia

The University of Plymouth takes undergraduate Early Childhood Studies students on study trips to The Gambia each year, enabling them to consider issues around contextually-appropriate early years provision and child well-being in the developing world. Students undertake a number of visits to nursery and primary schools, and have the opportunity to take part in short term voluntary activities with children. Holdsworth and Quinn (2010) challenge the notion of student volunteering as necessarily beneficial to underprivileged communities, and claim that even the benefits to students are assumed rather than proven (2010: 113). We are currently evaluating the benefits to students but, perhaps more importantly, are increasingly concerned about the impact on the Gambian schools who receive us each year. We challenge our students to reflect on their euro-centric perspectives, and what they have learnt not only about the issues in hand, but also about the nature of learning. We believe such experiences help them to reflect on their own preconceptions and beliefs (Ballin and Martin, 2007: 24), and we would like to explore how exposure to entirely different frames of reference enable them to see their own (teaching and learning) worlds differently, and how this may benefit them in the future as reflective early years practitioners, supporting young children in ‘unlearning’ false preconceptions. The personal and professional benefits to students come at what cost? The concern is that study trips such as these, without on-going critical scrutiny, will perpetuate global inequalities by benefiting the UK students, but being of little sustainable benefit to the host Gambian schools. We plan to explore the students’ perceptions of the impact of their visit on the children they have contact with. How can academic and ethical concerns be balanced to ensure that these trips and others like them are not merely another example of ‘development tourism’? (Robson, 2002: 328). References Ballin, B. and Martin, F. (2007) ‘Emotion Recollected in Tranquillity’ in Primary Geographer 62, 22-24. Holdsworth, C. and Quinn, J. (2010) ‘Student Volunteering in English Higher Education’ in Studies in Higher Education 35, 1, 113-127. Robson, E. (2002) ‘‘An Unbelievable Academic and Personal Experience’: Issues around teaching undergraduate field courses in Africa’ in Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 26, 3, 327-344.