Now we don’t see the university as something distant. It’s here in our hands’: situated pedagogy in Cuban municipal universities

The first years of the twenty-first century saw the introduction of a new mode of higher education in Cuba. Local university centres were set up across the country offering part time study to a range of students previously marginalised from higher education. As well as massively increasing access, this programme created a new kind of teacher – local professionals teaching part-time alongside their regular employment. Using the personal testimony of students and teachers in rural Granma, this paper examines the role of these teachers, with a particular emphasis on the value of their capacity to offer a pedagogy situated in the workplaces, communities and daily lives of their students.