| Research in Comparative
| ISSN 1745-4999 | ||
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Volume 2 Number 3 2007 | |||
Other issues available | Journal home page | Publisher home page | |||
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CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text] | |||
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SPECIAL ISSUE
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Learning about War and Peace in the Great Lakes Region of Africa |
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doi: 10.2304/rcie.2007.2.3.176 |
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Two-thirds of the world’s conflicts are in Africa. In particular, the Great Lakes region (Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Tanzania) continues to see conflicts that are complex, extreme and seemingly intractable. By exploring the narrative experiences of those most affected by the conflicts in the region – specifically refugees from Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda living in camps in north-western Tanzania – this article examines to what extent educative processes (holistic formal and informal learning processes) affect people’s experience and engagement in violent conflict. The article draws on the author’s research that identified different information circuits by which people learned about conflict. In opposition to the common perception that formal schooling effects change, the findings indicated that the primary mechanisms were oral/aural, such as gossip, traditional storytelling and radio. Individual and collective identities were constructed through this process and the research identified how identities could be shifted through different formal and informal educative processes – often through indoctrination or coercion. This article concludes with an indication of alternative strategies for conflict prevention and peacebuilding (particularly within a refugee or similar context). Efforts at peacebuilding continue to falter in the region and this illustrates the need to construct a more inclusive peacemaking process, taking into account the insights and values of those most affected. |
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How to Certify Learning in a Country Split into Two by a Civil War: governmental and non-governmental initiatives in Côte d’Ivoire, 2002‑06 |
doi: 10.2304/rcie.2007.2.3.191 |
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Following political turmoil and rising socio-economic difficulties, Côte d’Ivoire has been split into two since September 2002. The rebellion controls the northern part of the country and the main towns of Bouaké, Korhogo and Man, while the government controls the southern part with Abidjan, Yamoussoukro, Daloa and all the ports in the coastal area. At the beginning of the war, civil servants who were in place in the north of the country were called back to Abidjan to be redeployed in government-controlled areas. These included many teachers and education officials, but not all, as some of them chose to stay in the war-affected areas to continue their initial work. This article focuses specifically on governmental and local non-governmental initiatives related to education which were put in place at the onset of the crisis. What type(s) of education have been offered to the children in war-affected areas and to the displaced children in government-controlled areas? What have been the difficulties of organizing national examinations in war-affected areas? How have educational attainments been certified on both sides? The study covers the period 2002‑06, and is based on document analysis, grey literature collected on site and interviews with key informants. |
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Political Education in Croatian Secondary Schools: an emergency reaction to a chaotic context |
doi: 10.2304/rcie.2007.2.3.210 |
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The article draws on an analysis exploring how the content and aims of secondary school political education have been framed in official Croatian policy documents following the country’s war for independence, with particular focus on the underlying conception of citizenship promoted in such a post-conflict setting. The article also addresses how official textbooks for the secondary school subject of ‘politics and economics’ shape this conception of citizenship through their choice of topics. It is argued in the article that the case of Croatian political education illustrates how a social and historical tipping point can influence what counts as official political knowledge to be transmitted in schools, and thus exemplifies the transitional nature of such knowledge in emergency settings. This locates the issue of knowledge transmitted in Croatian secondary school political education in a broader theoretical discussion on how knowledge can be radically affected by ‘paradigm shifts’ in social and political circumstances, and raises the question of ways in which its arbitrariness can be minimised. To this end, special attention is given to the role of skills and values in political education. |
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Framing Youth within the Politics of Foreign Assistance |
doi: 10.2304/rcie.2007.2.3.222 |
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Although in the past the field of youth development has been subsumed within or occluded by other traditional development sectors such as education, a re-emerging emphasis on security in US government foreign assistance has tended to foreground youth as a frame of reference for international development programming and public diplomacy. While youth as security threat is by itself a reductive formulation, there are opportunities to grasp more deeply the power of young cohorts to affect social change in multidimensional ways. This article examines how youth issues have been framed within broader policy and program priorities of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), especially in post-conflict/fragile states, in an effort to illuminate some key dilemmas and knowledge gaps. |
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Gangs, Soldiers and ‘Idle Girls’: constructions of youth and development in World Bank discourse |
doi: 10.2304/rcie.2007.2.3.230 |
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This article examines the World Bank’s recent World Development Report on youth and development (2007) as an empirical example to explore the links between the employment of ‘group identity’ and the use of policy frameworks. Drawing on feminist theory to analyse the representations of young people put forward within the report, this article demonstrates how the report privileges economic indicators, elevates formal institutions, and obfuscates structural inequality and power. The article argues that the report’s failure to indicate the partiality of its perspective on youth and development problematically narrows the policy options the World Bank is able to present. |
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Education and Instability: avoiding the policy–practice gap in an emerging field |
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Z.E. KARPIÑSKA, RACHEL YARROW & L.M.A. GOUGH University of Oxford, United Kingdom |
doi: 10.2304/rcie.2007.2.3.242 |
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The imperative to provide education for communities affected by man-made or natural disaster has been strongly articulated. Since the mid 1990s, a growing body of literature and research has emerged in the fledgling field of ‘education and instability’; however, there is still a pressing need for high-quality, applicable research. The article argues that a scholarly attention to the insights and questions of ‘education and instability’ that privileges practitioner involvement may deepen and add rigour to existing insights. Such research may also raise questions and create critical discussion concerning assumptions about conflict, emergency, aid, policy, participation and service provision, and other issues in education and instability. A budding scholarly community at the University of Oxford is the Conflict and Education Research Group (CERG), comprising researchers who have practical experience of working with development agencies and in crisis situations. The group studies what role there might be for education, broadly defined, in promoting stability, peace and development. The article outlines the CERG’s emerging research agenda along with its commitment to moving beyond the policy–practice divide to produce meaningful scholarly research with applicable findings and clear dissemination strategies. |
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Educational Transfer in Situations Affected by Conflict: towards a common research endeavour |
doi: 10.2304/rcie.2007.2.3.252 |
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This article argues that the field of education and conflict is, in many ways, ‘stuck in its emergence’ because it has yet to develop common theoretical understandings, useful analytical tools, and shared conceptual frameworks to unify and sustain a mutual endeavour by scholars working on a diverse range of topics and cases. In a curious, tentative and collaborative way, therefore, this article seeks to explore potential solutions to this problem by searching for common ground between the fields of education and conflict and educational transfer. Its foremost question is: to what degree can analytical tools recently developed by those interested in policy transfer illuminate the investigations of those interested in education and conflict? To explore this question, two young scholars, one primarily engaged in research into processes of educational transfer and one focused on the dynamics of education and conflict, come together to argue first for the potential of collaboration between the subfields. The article then introduces a series of transfer models and presents examples wherein those models may be useful for the study of education and conflict. Finally, aspects of these models are combined with work done by scholars interested in conflict and transition to present a new conceptual device: ‘Educational Transfer in Situations Affected by Conflict’. The purpose of presenting the new model herein is to elicit critique and feedback from researchers, policy makers and practitioners that, it is hoped, will lead to its further refinement and to an understanding of its potential for establishing common ground. |
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