TPD for Arts Integration in Education & Community Spaces in Ugandan Refugee Settlements

• In Event: Tensions in Supporting Teachers and Teacher Professional Development Across the Humanitarian-Development Nexus

Proposal

A few decades ago, the global humanitarian community dedicated little effort to ensuring that refugee children and youth were able to access quality education. So-called “minimum standards” for refugee and displaced education were first elaborated in 2004, less than two decades ago. Their use as a normative framework for the delivery of education to refugee and displaced children was needed to bring more attention to the importance of education in humanitarian response, but the use of “minimum standards” also begs other questions: Why do we seek to ensure the minimum possible for some of the world’s most vulnerable children and youth? Do these children and youth not have a right to robust, holistic education that will help them to overcome their circumstances? Is it not a better investment for the humanitarian community to provide an education that will allow them to contribute to the rebuilding of their societies and the chance for long-term peace? And, if indeed that would be the better option, what would it look like?

To answer these questions, the Ubumwe: Exploring Arts for Education and Psychosocial Support with Refugee Children and Youth project set out to explore how the arts can be integrated in both formal education and broader community spaces to bolster psychosocial well-being, academic achievement, social cohesion, and peace among the refugee and host communities in the Kyangwali settlement in western Uganda. The Ubumwe project, which means “togetherness” in Kinyabwisha, was initiated at the request of a school leader running a community-based school in Kyangwali who believed that art education has the power to change the students’ experiences by promoting creative expression, collaboration, and reflection. The concept of Ubumwe also reflects our multi-partner, interdisciplinary, and collaborative effort to design, implement, and measure the outcomes and impact of this new project. Project activities to date consist of the development of: a 12-week primary education level arts curriculum that is currently being piloted in the community school; a teacher professional development workshop; continuous teacher professional development and support activities; and a community-based arts project led by local teaching artists.

During the early pilot of this new project, the arts education curricular materials are being tested for usability, acceptability, and feasibility in meaningfully supporting the psychosocial and academic well-being of refugee children and youth in Kyangwali. We are also exploring the perceived impacts of the program from the perspective of students and teachers through pre-, end-of-unit, and post-curriculum student surveys, teacher observations and reflections, and qualitative interviews with teachers and school administrators. Based on these data, this paper will highlight the successes, challenges, and tensions faced in designing the teacher professional development components of the project while also highlighting the partnership strengthening process that occurred to ensure cultural relevance and sustainability. Additionally, this paper considers opportunities for rethinking teacher professional development in contexts across the humanitarian-development nexus, which are informed by the lived experiences of the teachers who participated in the pilot project.

Authors

• Mary Mendenhall, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Kemigisha Richardson, Teachers College at Columbia University