Measuring and Understanding Resilience in Education in Crises and Conflict Contexts

• In Event: Expanding the Understanding of Resilience in Educational Responses to Crises

Proposal

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted a lesson that climate change will also teach: shocks to education systems through crisis and conflict are likely to become more frequent, deeper, and less responsive to the tools currently at our disposal. “‘Resilience’—defined by USAID as the “ability of people, households, communities, countries, and systems to mitigate, adapt to, and recover from shocks and stresses in a manner that reduces chronic vulnerability and facilitates inclusive growth” (USAID 2012b)—has gained increasing attention for its potential to shape a new paradigm of engagement in crisis and conflict contexts” (Shah, 2019). As this new paradigm takes shape, policymakers, practitioners and researchers alike need to develop frameworks for understanding how their actions, interventions, programs and policies affect the adaptive, absorptive and transformative capacities of education organizations and systems.

The global learning network, the Education in Crisis and Conflict Network (ECCN), has engaged members in a participatory mapping of indicators used to measure, quantify, and understand resilience at the organization and systems level. This paper draws from a desk review of academic and gray literature, focus group consultations with learning network members, and written member submissions obtained through a questionnaire to the network mailing list. Analysis of these data sources offers ideas about cross-sectoral understandings of resilience, potential contributions the education sector could make toward societal resilience to crisis and conflict, and questions for further research to understand the impact of resilience-focused interventions for educational organizations and systems.

Shah, R. (2019). Transforming Systems in Times of Adversity: Education and Resilience White Paper. USAID.

Author

• Jasmina Josic, Education Development Center