Listening to Young People to Improve Education and increase their Agency

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

For the 2023 conference, CIES encourages us to consider how education can be improved for a more equitable world. In the proposed bilingual panel (French and English), the team from the Participatory Research on Education and Agency in Mali (PREAM ) – a three-years research project investigating the relationship between the agency of adolescents and their experience of primary education in the conflict-affected regions of Mopti and Ségou in Mali – will reflect on the importance of listening to young people. In particular, the panel will discuss how creating opportunities for adolescents to share their ideas on the relation between and among agency, education and crisis can contribute to making education more inclusive and increasing young people’s agency.

The armed conflict affecting the central and northern parts of Mali has commemorated its 10th anniversary, and the country’s youth are far from celebrating. Recurring droughts, political instability, repeated workers’ strikes, COVID-19, violence, and economic volatility are all facets of a multi-dimensional crisis that increases inequalities and makes life particularly difficult for adolescents living in conflict zones. The crisis in Mali has aggravated poverty and disturbed education in several ways. According to Mali’s Education Cluster (2022) 1731 schools were closed across the country as of March 2022. That represents a closure rate of 20%. The most affected region was Mopti, with a closure rate of 43%. The conflict also caused the destruction of educational furniture and infrastructure and increased the lack of teachers. Insecurity led to absenteeism and youth having to spend energy and time working to support their families rather than studying (Traore, 2015; 2018). The crisis also prompted movements of population that deprive displaced learners of their right to attend school and overcrowd the classrooms of the host communities. According to UNHCR (2022), the number of internally displaced people in Mali, 64% of whom are less than 18 years old, has increased from 38 172 in 2017 to 350 110 in January 2022.

In such hazardous context, social justice and inclusion tend to be sacrificed. The voice of youth often remains unheard and youth agency, understood here as “the ability to define one’s goals and act upon them” (Kabeer, 1999; Gammage et al., 2016; and Donald et al., 2020), may be restrained and overlooked. Former studies have shown that even though adolescents are in an asymmetrical position with adults, young people can influence their environment and display a variety of strategies to restore their wellbeing even in situations characterized by conflict and violence (Biggeri et al., 2019; Veronese et al., 2017; Cavazzoni et al., 2021). However, opportunities to do so are constrained by the social, political, and economic conditions that youth face. In other words, youth agency is affected by the structures around them. So far, little is known about the way young people themselves perceive such structures in relation to their agency and much of the literature on youth agency is conceptualized based on evidence collected in the Global North rather than the Global South where most of the youth live (Punch, 2016; Lussier, 2021). By investigating adolescents’ views of youth agency, education and conflict in Mali, PREAM seeks to address this gap.

In this panel, the researchers will explore two questions related to the sub-theme of the conference on social justice and inclusion: 1. How can we amplify voices of the marginalized and minorized, in this case adolescents living in Mali’s conflict-affected areas? 2. How can education best reckon with conflict and war, the fragility of democratic institutions, and the undermining of education as a basic right? In particular, the researchers will use PREAM’s experiences and preliminary findings to discuss why it is important for education actors and policy makers to listen to adolescents in Mali on questions of education and agency and on appropriate methodologies for doing so. The papers presented will draw on the data from the participatory visual methods (PVM) (Mitchell et al., 2017) used in the first phase of the study as well as the survey conducted in the second phase of the research project to put forward the perspectives from adolescent participants aged 12 -18 years. Overall, the panelists will also present what the young respondents communicated and the main messages they wish to share with adults.

The panel will be made up of four papers’ presentations followed by the commentary of one discussant. The first paper will delve into the methodological implications of working in conflict zones and discuss how PREAM used PVM workshops to inform the design of the survey and how it was possible to listen to the young participants even when using quantitative methods. The second paper will present what the participating adolescents from Ségou and Mopti regions shared about the crisis, how young people experience life in the conflict area and the implications for the education sector. The third paper will present PREAM’s preliminary findings on agency and education. More specifically, it will address how youth from the researched areas see their agency, show how they represents schools and discuss the relation between agency and schooling. The final paper will reflect on the role of schools as a bulwark against the conscription of learners in jihadist groups by discussing the logics and representations of pupils. The panel will conclude with the commentary of the discussant, which will bring the main messages of the three papers together.

Sub Unit

• Africa SIG

Chair

• Kattie Lussier, McGill University

Individual Presentations

• Listening to research participants in times of crisis: The methodological implications of using Q2 with youth in conflict zones. - Claudia Mitchell, McGill University; Kattie Lussier, McGill University

• The Malian crisis through the eyes of youth in Mopti: How do children talk about their experiences of the security crisis? - Moriké Dembele, Université des Lettres et Sciences Humaines de Bamako; Mamadou Dia, Université des Lettres et Sciences Humaines de Bamako

• Listening to adolescents from Segou and Mopti: what are they communicating about education and agency? - Fatoumata Keita, Université des Lettres et Sciences Humaines de Bamako

• School as a bulwark against the conscription of pupils; an analysis of learners’ logics. - Idrissa Soiba Traore, Université des Lettres et Sciences Humaines de Bamako