Compounding Crises: Impact of COVID-19 on Teachers and Teaching in Conflict-Affected Settings Part I

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Teachers in conflict and protracted crises are caught in ongoing adversities faced by their learners, parents and fellow teachers both within schools and in their communities. These educational settings require the most qualified, trained and motivated teachers who can support learners who may have been adversely affected by forced displacement, ongoing social exclusions and discriminations, and the loss of loved ones to the war. Yet, there is often a shortage of teachers in conflict-affected contexts; where teachers are available, they often lack relevant qualifications or professional capacities to teach within resource-constrained environments; and their employment may be unstable due to ongoing conflict, restrictions on their right-to-work and usually harsh conditions in which their families must live. On top of these ongoing difficulties, COVID-19 created an ‘unprecedented global education emergency’ exacerbating the funding gap in education, disproportionately affecting the world’s poorest and most vulnerable children, and worsening the situation of gender-based violence. Nevertheless, teachers in conflict-affected contexts are the frontline heroes and can play a crucial role in facilitating the return of these learners who face a high risk of dropping out from school permanently. For many learners, COVID-19 may be an emergency of their lifetime but for those living in conflict-affected settings, it has become a ‘pain-multiplier’. The most vulnerable learning communities such as internally displaced people, refugees, and those who live in contexts of ongoing war have suffered the most during COVID-19 and the impact is likely to be long-lasting due to the decline of humanitarian aid, deteriorating economic conditions of families due to lockdowns, and closures of schools and learning centers.

To capture these complexities, Education and Conflict Review (ECR), an open-access journal housed at the Centre for Education and International Development, Institute of Education, University College London will feature a Special Issue on teachers and teaching in conflict-affected settings during COVID-19.

The enclosed abstracts represent papers currently undergoing review for publication in the Special Issue, which aim to be ready by the CIES 2023 conference. They bring together diverse theoretical, methodological, and contextual insights from Colombia, Honduras, Kenya, Lebanon, Liberia, Mali, Myanmar, and Zambia.

For CIES 2023, we are proposing back-to-back panel discussions. Part I will examine how teacher educators in a decentralized education system in Myanmar found ways to adapt and innovate through pandemic-related disruptions, how non-traditional forms of teaching can strengthen refugee belonging and agency among Syrian tertiary students in Lebanon, how teachers in South Africa navigated their teaching and personal well-being amidst their own invisibilization in policy discourse, and how teachers in Kenyan refugee camps are experts of their own settings and can work together to overcome contextual challenges.

Part II will examine teachers’ gendered experiences during the pandemic in Honduras, Liberia, Mali, and Zambia and how those experiences can inform ongoing discussions about teacher well-being; teachers’ experiences working at the nexus of conflict and health-related disasters in pastoralist and refugee communities in Kenya and the challenges they face imparting quality education; the need to engage notions of mobility and diversity within larger conversations about inclusion in Colombia and other conflict-affected contexts; and the need for more development-oriented teacher management practices to strengthen the working conditions for refugee teachers in Kenya amidst efforts at national inclusion.

This two-part panel series aligns with CIES 2023 Conference Theme III: School Systems and Educators to Improve Learning and Teaching in Formal and Informal Settings. By centering the experiences of the educators who navigate the opportunities and challenges that emerge in settings impacted by compounded crises, we can better understand the changes that need to be made to education practices, policies, and research both to prepare for and mitigate future shocks. By reflecting on new teaching and learning experiences prompted by the global health pandemic, we can also identify different ways of reaching marginalized learners and expanding their educational opportunities. Ultimately, the discussions across the two panels will help advance our knowledge about multidimensional impacts of conflict on teachers and teaching amid health pandemics as well as the ways that teachers in conflict settings capitalize on their already established, emergency-focused educational practices to mitigate the adverse impacts of COVID-19 on education.

Sub Unit

• Education in Conflict and Emergencies SIG

Chairs

• Mary Mendenhall, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Tejendra Pherali, UCL Institute of Education

Individual Presentations

• Designed for Disruption: Lessons Learned from Teacher Education in Myanmar and its Borderlands - William Gray Rinehart, Mote Oo Education; Greg Tyrosvoutis, TeacherFOCUS

• Participatory Teacher Professional Development: Elevating Teacher Expertise in Kakuma Refugee Camp and Kalobeyei Settlement - Mading Peter Angong; Danielle Lorber Falk, Teachers College, Columbia University; Mary Mendenhall, Teachers College, Columbia University

Discussant

• Zeena Zakharia, University of Maryland College Park