Freirean Pedagogy in a Refugee Camp: Building the Teacher-Student Relationship to Educate Syria's Displaced Youth

• In Event: Roundtable Session 32
  In Roundtable Session: International Freirean Experiences

Abstract

Since the Syrian crisis broke out in 2011, the population of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’s Za`atari refugee camp has grown to over 80,000 Syrian refugees. With the aim of determining the quality of the education provided to refugee children living in the camp, I draw from the educational standards of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and make use of official documents and reports, studies of Jordan’s education system, and interviews with professionals working in Za`atari camp’s education sector. I determine that effective refugee education requires relationship-centered, dialogical learning environments; due to infrastructural and systematic obstacles, however, teachers in Za`atari’s formal education sector rely on authoritarian teaching methods that are unlikely to change until these obstacles are addressed.

Author

• Katherine Koch