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Parakrama, Arjuna
- Professor and Head
- University of Peradeniya
- Department of English
- Sri Lanka
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Arjuna Parakrama is currently Professor and Chair of the English Department of Sri Lanka’s oldest university, Peradeniya, which he joined after nearly 20 years at the metropolitan University of Colombo, where his last appointment was as the Dean of the Faculty of Arts.
Arjuna’s current research interests include studying (a) issues relating to language and equity in (higher) education, (b) the relationship among marginalization, conflict and human rights, (b) patterns of dominant discourse and subaltern resistance, and (d) collective (psychosocial) trauma in (post)conflict societies.
In addition to his academic work, for which he has received a Guggenheim Grant and Senior Fellowships from the US Institute of Peace and the Carnegie Institute for Ethics and International Affairs, Arjuna counts 15 years as a community development practitioner and trainer. He has worked for UNDP as an Advisor on Peace and Development, and is currently a Consultant to the UN Officer of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, studying the relationship between poverty, conflict and human rights. In 2005, he led a team of international experts in assessing the international tsunami response in four of the worst-affected Asian countries from the perspective of local capacity development.
Arjuna writes poetry, for which he has won awards, and is an itinerant journalist. He has had a lifelong involvement in environmental conservation issues, and is a passionate bird watcher.
Select Publications
- Parakrama, Arjuna (2003) Some Thoughts on the Language of Privilege & the Privilege of Language. Colombo: Katha, 2003.
- Parakrama, Arjuna (2002) Collected Poems, Colombo: Gunaratne, 2002.
- Parakrama, Arjuna, et al, (2002) Report on Current Efforts to Facilitate Democratic and Pluralist Values through Education in Sri Lanka. Colombo: SIDA, 2002.
- Parakrama, Arjuna (2001) Social Cleaving: Resistance and Loss within a Bereaved Culture Colombo: Katha, 2001.
- Parakrama, Arjuna (1998) Identity in Crisis or Crisis as Identity: Notes to the Margins of this War, Newton Gunasinghe Memorial Lecture 1998: December 1998 [Monograph].
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Weapon or Tool?
English and the Access vs. Quality Dilemma in Sri Lankan Higher Education
Competence in the English Language provides Sri Lankan university students with their only direct access to the universe of knowledge. Yet, due to the lack of teachers and resources, students from disadvantaged socio-economic rural backgrounds are denied access to English throughout their (free) school education. Thus, the recent move to enhance the quality of higher education through a shift to instruction in the English Language, though necessary to assure quality, regrettably serves to exclude many excellent students, including a high proportion of young women. Even in professional programs that have already made the transition to English, such as Medicine, Business Management and Engineering, a preliminary survey indicates that students’ varying competencies in the language significantly affect the quality of their education, again easily mapped along lines of structural disadvantage and the urban/rural divide. Overall, the issue of English has created resentment and frustration among students and staff, and, if not effectively addressed, may result in widening the gap between equity and quality.
This study seeks to analyze the complex ways in which the English Language both enhances quality and denies equity in higher education in Sri Lanka, using qualitative and quantitative data. Different models used in Asia will be examined to explore more nuanced alternatives to what is a major dilemma in many national contexts where a manifest need for the international language has not been matched by its provision both at school and university. The research will identify alternative strategies that can ensure quality English medium and/or bilingual education, irrespective of Faculty/School or discipline, which minimizes the exclusion and further marginalization of socio-economically, culturally and politically disadvantaged groups. These strategies, which range from pedagogical intervention to policy transformation, will derive from a sustained national stakeholder dialogue, complemented by learning from successful international initiatives facilitated through a two-month affiliation to the Asian Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin (the largest program of its kind in the USA). My work will provide general insights into the opportunity/challenge of English in higher education in national contexts where it’s a (fraught) second language, and will suggest concrete alternatives for qualitative change in academic systems that have become increasingly uneasy, even volatile, as they struggle to balance quality and competitiveness with equal opportunity. |
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