Systemic Tensions in Formal/Nonformal Educational Practices in Postconflict Schools: A Cultural Historical Activity Perspective

• In Event: 58.082 - Roundtable Session 25
  In Roundtable Session: 58.082-5 - Learning Through Tension and Conflict: Global Perspectives

Abstract

Learning in post-conflict settings involve a complex array of teaching and learning practices, which occur in formal and non-formal educational settings. In areas recovering from civil wars, these systems function discursively, in ways that compliment and contradict each other, in effect advancing or restricting successful academic outcomes. This qualitative study is framed through cultural historical activity theory, and focuses on systemic contradictions or tensions that confound successful academic outcomes. This paper highlights tensions within these complex educational systems that restrain student achievement and argues that systemic tensions are way more complex and do not fall neatly within linear and circular dichotomies, but in fact often its form and dynamics change reciprocally as the nature of the activity itself changes.

Author

• Grace Tamara Handy, The University of Kansas