Teaching the Hard to Reach in Sub-Saharan Africa: Alternative teaching and learning approaches in contexts of fragility, crisis and conflict

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

The COVID-19 pandemic, global inflationary pressures, and the climate crisis in sub-Saharan Africa constitute a “perfect storm” for escalating labor migration, food insecurity, competition over scarce resources, armed violence and displacement, particularly in the context of resource-rich and ethnically fragmented populations. These global and regional risks affect girls and boys differently, as indicated by educational enrollment, retention and progression rates and child labour statistics in sub-Saharan Africa (INEE, 2021; ILO and UNICEF, 2021). They also implicate the need for alternative education approaches (AEAs) that facilitate the (re)entry of out-of-school girls and boys into education systems, and remediate the problem of overage enrolment to fulfill SDG 4 commitments by 2030.
The panel is guided by two key questions: How can AEAs strengthen teacher professional development, and what modes of intervention support learning outcomes for the most vulnerable children and adolescents in contexts of fragility, crisis and conflict. Contributors comprise representatives of six Canadian NGOs and local partners involved in the design and implementation of five AEAs in sub-Saharan Africa aligned with national education policies (Burkina Faso, DRC, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Uganda). All but one of these projects (CODE’s Girls’ Accelerated Learning Initiative) are funded by Global Affairs Canada as part of the Canadian government’s commitment to the Charlevoix Declaration (2018). The projects under review involve various modalities (e.g., remedial and accelerated learning, after-school programs, teacher professional development), partnerships, target groups and financial and in-kind supports to address the unique barriers to girls’ education. Specifically, presentations will interrogate three critical dimensions of AEAs related to context, temporality, and gender-responsiveness based on a comparative analysis of project documents and evaluation reports. The panel will also speculate on interventions that go beyond mitigating gender disparities to imagine transformational change, and make recommendations regarding program design, implementation, and monitoring processes, and promotion policies.
The first and most obvious dimension relates to context, and includes contemporary and historical processes that affect programming downstream (i.e. implementation) and upstream (reporting to donors). The seven selected countries vary in their intensity of conflict and crisis and the impact on civilian populations, economic conditions, social norms and practices, including gender norms. The panel will consider how contextual specificities inform project design decisions and adaptive processes in response to internal and external developments over time.
The second dimension focuses on temporality. In the absence of AEAs, girls may have few alternative support systems, and may drop-out with little chance of returning to school and be vulnerable to child marriage or child labour. Temporality refers to both speed and timing. Speed does not imply either haphazard or poor quality programs. On the contrary, as with Speed Schools that integrate out-of-school girls and boys into education systems in Burkina Faso, speed requires balancing expeditious and deliberate, time-bound actions designed to expand access for girls to safe, quality, inclusive education that is responsive to fragile and conflict-affected contexts. In the absence of speed, learning losses may be perceived as overwhelming and irrecoverable, offsetting an intrinsic desire to learn. Timing refers to the optimum stage for programs. While girls at all ages can learn and “catch up” to academic standards given appropriate support systems, this panel will examine the particular challenges of interventions in the early years (Grades 1-4) and adolescence.
The third dimension focuses on gender-responsive interventions understood as actions that take into account social norms and behaviors which contribute to gender inequalities, and aim to mitigate their adverse effects. These include gendered divisions of labor, and forms of masculinities and femininities that contribute to gender-based biases, stereotypes, violence, and unequal educational outcomes. Accordingly, panelists will describe and analyze the merits and limitations of gender-responsive interventions including the provision of sanitary pads, social and reproductive health and life skills lessons, and gender responsive pedagogy for teacher professional development that supports trauma-informed teaching, gender-specific classroom management practices, and gender-neutral language. At the same time, gender responsive interventions narrowly defined by binaries of men/boys and women/girls homogenize girls. To avoid such reductionism, gender-responsive programs that integrate the concept of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991) can layer gendered power relations with other structural inequalities, and take seriously the positionalities and lived experience of children and adolescents of all genders who may also identify as persons with disabilities, members of ethno-cultural, racialized, or otherwise marginalized groups, and may be subject to forms of discrimination and stigmatization based on classism, racism, ableism, homophobia and heteronormativity. Accordingly, panelists will explore how intersectionality is integrated in gender-responsive program design, data collection, and evaluation practices.
In analyzing these three, interdependent dimensions, this panel will provide development practitioners and comparative, international education scholars with evidence-based knowledge that contributes to scholarship on AEAs, identifies gaps, and informs program design and implementation processes to improve teacher professional development, and girls’ learning outcomes in fragile, crisis and conflict-affected contexts, and donor priorities.
References
Charlevoix Declaration on Quality Education for Girls, Adolescent Girls and Women in Developing Countries (2018). https://inee.org/sites/default/files/resources/Charlevoix%20Declaration.pdf
Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299.
Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (2021). Mind the gap: The state of girls' education in conflict and crisis statistics at a glance.
https://inee.org/resources/mind-gap-statistics-glance
International Labour Office and United Nations Children’s Fund. (2021). Child labour: Global estimates 2020, trends and the road forward. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_norm/---ipec/documents/publication/wcms_797515.pdf

Sub Unit

• Education in Conflict and Emergencies SIG

Chair

• Scott Walter, CODE

Individual Presentations

• Girls Accelerated Learning Initiative (GALI) - Scott Walter, CODE

• Improving Adolescent Girls Inclusive Education - IMAGINE - Kouman Aime Kouame Aime Kouame, Plan International Canada

• Strengthen girls’ right to secure schooling on time in Burkina Faso - Hema Siriki, Plan International Burkina Faso