Dr. T. Gregory Barrett, associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership, is back stateside this week following a 10-day tour of South Africa as part of a People-to-People Ambassador program for educational researchers.

Barrett and other members of the delegation started the tour in Johannesburg with an orientation and cultural briefing on political and cultural diversity of South Africa, followed by meeting with representatives of JET Educational Services and the Centre for Education Policy Development. The group discussed the relationship between education, skills development, and the world of work.

The Americans discussed the development and evaluation projects the South Africans are focusing on in poor, marginalized and disadvantaged communities across the country. The delegation visited Soweto and the University of Witwatersrand’s School of Education, founded as an open university with a policy of non-discrimination that was nearly destroyed by the government’s apartheid polities. “Wits” is now a major resource for the media, commerce, and industry to provide expertise in the now-mixed society.

In addition to sight-seeing outings, the professional program focused on debates over constructions of race in public discourse and education policy, the challenges and opportunities of engaging in multiple languages in instruction, innovative arts programming, and education and poverty.

Barrett was invited to participate in the delegation by Dr. Carol Lee, president of the American Educational Research Association and professor of both Learning Sciences and of African American Studies, in the Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy.