Taking to the Streets: A Study of the Street Academy in Ankara

Abstract

In wide-ranging attacks on academic freedom in Turkey in recent years, thousands of academics have lost their university positions. At the end of 2016 oppositional academics, many of whom were dismissed from their positions for having signed a peace petition, established a Street Academy as an alternative way to reach out to both students and the public in Ankara. In this study we analyse the experiences of these street academy lecturers from the perspective of Social Representation Theory. Our main aims were to explore teaching experience perceptions and representations and, in addition, also the opportunities and challenges generated by this alternative academy. Data consisted of semi-structured interviews with five female and five male street academy lecturers. The results of a qualitative thematic analysis revealed that the way participants explained their experiences could be organised into three major themes and several subordinate themes. One of the most salient results was that participating in the street Academy had become a way to defend academic freedom. More generally suggested results demonstrated that teaching in this new setting, outside of the universities and away from customised learning environments, was quite a novel experience. The possible implications of street academy lecturers' experiences are discussed.

Resoulience: Reimagining Resilience (and Ourselves)

“….translating [their Faith] into actions of spiritual and social development" (The Universal House of Justice, 2007). Alternative proactive community-based measures of constructive resilience to sustain teaching and learning at the level of formal higher education have similarly been implemented (prior to and overlapping with the creation of BIHE) through "street academies" in Turkey (Aktas et al, 2020), underground universities in Kosovo (Sommers & Buckland, 2004) and Poland (Garlinski, 1975), and educational programs held in private homes, religious institutions, and offices for students in Palestine (Zelkovitz, 2014).…”

Academics in Exile

“…For example, Ankara Street Academy started teaching in Kuğulu Park 24 with a lecture entitled "Hegemony and Counter Hegemony." Unlike other academies, their audience was the people living in the neighborhood, not necessarily university students, and their aim was to offer academic knowledge to the people while choosing the topics relevant to current debates in Turkish society (Aktas et al, 2020).…”