How to nurture and sustain a thriving teacher workforce in refugee contexts: a multi-country research study

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session (English)

Proposal

At 25.9 million, the number of refugees around the world today is the highest it has been since World War II, according to the latest figures from UNHCR. Half of these refugees are children, and, while the global community has made a concerted effort to meet their educational needs, as of 2018, only 63 percent and 24 percent had access to primary and secondary schooling respectively. While recent research efforts have turned to exploring the quality and equity of refugee education in addition to access, and there is now a burgeoning evidence base on these topics, significant gaps remain.

One area that has fortunately received increasing attention in education in emergencies research in the last few years is teachers and teaching. Research from more stable contexts has shown that the quality of teachers and teaching are the most important factors affecting student outcomes among those that are open to policy influence. In crisis and displacement situations, the role of teachers is particularly significant; they are sometimes the only educational resource available to students.

However, not only is there a mass shortage of teachers in displacement settings, particularly of qualified teachers, but there are a multitude of challenges associated with teacher management in these contexts as well. These include a lack of appropriate personal and professional preparation to provide psychosocial support to students and to practise self-care, uncertain career opportunities, financial and social insecurity, language barriers, gender, inadequate compensation, and a lack of coordination between the many non-governmental and governmental actors involved in service provision.

Most refugee children will spend their entire childhood in exile. Responding to their educational needs will require innovative policy solutions that put teachers at the centre, not only because teachers are often the sole educational resource available to learners during crisis, but also because teachers are themselves rights-holders as members of affected communities. Such policy solutions also need to pay attention to the dynamics and context of the displacement crisis, focusing on teachers in refugee settings rather than teachers of refugees. Not only is the displacement crisis dynamic, with receiving countries becoming sending countries and vice versa, but the threat to global security and wellbeing posed by the current climate crisis will likely lead to new displacement crises in the coming years. Further, sometimes host communities are more vulnerable than refugee communities are, especially if they reside in remote locations, or come from a nomadic population, emphasising the need for a whole-society approach, championed by advocates for the Global Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF).

As more and more emergencies become protracted crises, and refugee populations continue to grow, it is even more urgent to build an evidence base to guide the development and implementation of such innovative policy solutions. The purpose of this panel is to present the progress made to date on a multi-country study aiming to provide governments with evidence-informed policy guidance on how to nurture and sustain a thriving body of great teachers who facilitate quality education for all. Specifically, this research project has been designed to explore how governments can recruit and retain effective teachers by: (1) providing meaningful opportunities for personal and professional growth, and (2) improving employment and career conditions. The overarching research question for the project is: “What effective/promising policies and implementation strategies exist for the management of teachers in refugee contexts in Jordan, and where are there potential spaces for further policy development and successful implementation?”

We have taken a collaborative, iterative, mixed methods approach to explore how teacher management policies are being developed, communicated, interpreted, mediated, struggled over, and implemented at national, regional, and local levels in a number of different countries. We piloted the research in Ethiopia between September 2018 and September 2019, and rolled it out in Jordan in September 2019, with an expected end date of September 2020. Research will start in Kenya in the first quarter of 2020 and in Uganda the following year. There are plans to launch the research in Lebanon and Turkey in 2021. We will also be producing a documentary film on the experiences of teachers in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda.

Through this panel, we echo the statement from the conference call for papers that “Our own survival on the damaged Earth will depend on our capacity to engage with and learn from a wide range of interdisciplinary research and education practices, drawing on diverse voices, sources, methods, theories, evidence, and perspectives.” We challenge conference participants to ‘think aloud’ with us about how to undertake more collaborative, more iterative research that cuts across borders, encourages reciprocal meaningful learning throughout, and, importantly, leads to effective policy action.

In our first paper, we will present our research design and conceptual framework, and how these have evolved over time, demonstrating the importance of reflexivity and flexibility in undertaking research in crisis and displacement contexts. In our second paper, we will present the findings and recommendations from our Ethiopian pilot study. Finally, our third paper will showcase some fresh, preliminary findings following our first phase of data collection in Jordan.

Through this panel, we hope to highlight the role of teachers as rights-holders within refugee settings. Teachers are more than service providers; they are themselves members of affected communities and potentially powerful agents of positive policy reform. We aim to contribute to the burgeoning research that focuses on teachers in refugee contexts and to provide evidence-informed policy solutions to support UNESCO Member States in responding to the call set out in the Incheon Declaration to: “ensure that teachers and educators are empowered, adequately recruited, well-trained, professionally qualified, motivated and supported within well-resourced, efficient and effectively governed systems.”

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Anna Riggall, Education Development Trust

Individual Presentations

• Developing a research methodology and conceptual framework for understanding effective teacher management policies - Stephanie Bengtsson, IIEP UNESCO

• Promising policies for the effective management of teachers in refugee contexts in Ethiopia: findings from a pilot study - Helen West, Education Development Trust

• Promising policies for the effective management of teachers in refugee contexts in Jordan: Preliminary findings - Katja Hinz, IIEP UNESCO; Rachael Fitzpatrick, Education Development Trust