Though the world is experiencing unprecedented, persistent crises, there remains little empirical research on teachers working amidst such crises. The small but foundational literature on teachers in crisis contexts within the field of Education in Emergencies has explored the lived experiences of teachers, paying particular attention to how their gender, displacement status, and participation in professional development activities, among other factors, influence teachers’ identities, well-being, and teaching practice. However, this scholarship rarely engages with broader educational literature on teachers, particularly the development of their professional identity, which encompasses teachers’ approaches, actions, and attitudes towards the profession. Further, the teacher literature from stable contexts, mostly in the Global North (e.g., North America, Europe, Oceania), does not engage with research on teachers working amidst conflict, crisis, and displacement. This lack of engagement limits comprehensive understanding of what it means to be a teacher, including how teachers perceive and enact their work—a worrying limitation, given the central role teachers play in implementing quality education. Bridging this divide, this researcher drew on these bodies of literature to explore the roles, responsibilities, and identities of teachers over the course of their lives who live and work amidst protracted conflict, recurrent migration, and forced displacement on both sides of the border in refugee-producing and refugee-receiving communities. This study also extended this scholarship by centering the experiences of teachers as essential actors within education systems as opposed to including them peripherally as key stakeholders within broader educational inquiry. Utilizing ethnographic and narrative methods, the researcher conducted this 5-month qualitative study to examine how protracted conflict, recurrent migration, and forced displacement influence the lived experiences and professional identities of national and refugee primary school teachers in Palabek refugee settlement in northern Uganda and Torit in Eastern Equatoria State in South Sudan. Findings from this study demonstrated teachers’ reluctant pathways to, complex experiences in, and future plans for remaining in or leaving the profession. Further, findings demonstrated an abiding paradox: the glorification of education as a panacea for social malady alongside the devaluing of the central actor in delivering education—the teacher. Thus, the findings not only contribute to theoretical and empirical research on teacher identity and teachers in crisis contexts, but they also encourage practitioners and policymakers to improve support to teachers across stable and crisis contexts alike.

A research report submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education (Coursework and Dissertation), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2018 / Internal educator migration has emerged as one of the factors aiding inequalities in South African schools. A unidirectional movement of irreplaceable educators has become evident which aids the inequalities persisting amongst neighbouring schools. Irreplaceable educators move from public to former model C schools and from former model C schools to independent schools, leaving schools exposed to a less capable quality staff. This research aimed to voice the experiences of post internal-migration educators in Pretoria while determining the push and pull factors that lead to the unidirectional migration of educators between former model C schools to independent schools. The research comprised of a narrative study in which six participants were interviewed about their migration experiences. The results of the study revealed that internal educator migration is caused by six push factors in former model C schools: economic pressure, school management, personal and emotional experiences, poor academic achievement, lack of learner discipline and a high teacher to learner ratio. Internal educator migration is also aided by six pull factors offered by independent schools: good learner discipline, financial benefits, lighter workload, lower teacher to learner ratio, professional treatment and higher quality academic learners. The finding further revealed that educators from former model C schools are attractive to independent schools and are regularly headhunted by independent schools. The researcher concludes the research report with an analytic model of the factors which influence internal educator migration and recommended methods to alleviate the educator migration push factors. In addition, the researcher provides recommendations for educator retention and further studies. / XL2019

An unprecedented 65.6 million persons are forcibly displaced (e.g., refugees, asylum-seekers, IDPs). Half are youth. Hope is often the feeling that sustains youth through intolerable conditions. Basic education in protracted areas is seen as a protective factor that nurtures hope and psychosocial wellbeing in the lives of children and youth. This research sought to extend this concept to the higher education in protracted refugee context, where refugees (ages 18-35) were able to co-create spaces of hope that recognized their own agency and their ability to question the status quo while developing critical thinking skills. Based on a theoretical framework of the philosophy of hope, psychology of hope, pedagogy of hope, and critical hope, I explored with refugees their perceptions of hope before, during, and after their participation of my psychosocial peace-building education course over a period of six months. Using a pragmatic mixed-methods community-based action approach, I collected: 31 Hope Index of Staats surveys (pre, post, and a follow-up six months later), eight semi-structured interviews (two interviews and then a follow up six months later for each participant), student reflection journals, and researcher field notes. A thematic analysis revealed four themes: Reflecting on critical hope and critical despair; reconciling identities; resurfacing narratives and creating new narratives of hope; and restoring hope and agency in higher education. By nurturing hopeful views and co-creating opportunities for critical thinking skills, refugees seem to be able to continue to play a pivotal role in rebuilding a stronger, just, and peaceful civil society.

Public opinion, media and literature describe refugees as generally suffering, traumatised, dependent, helpless victims without power, in need of constant guidance and support in order to find solutions to their predicament. Humanitarian assistance may be accused of perpetuating this dependency and disempowerment. To me this may be true of refugees in encampment. The perception portrayed in the various media is unfitting and a sharp contrast to the perceptions and experiences of refugees learners encountered in this study. I questioned for myself the potential image of refugee learners being powerless and helpless and felt that if all refugees shared that view outlined above, it would worsen their situation instead of empowering their aspirations, history and capacities. So I chose to ask the refugee learners. This led to the purpose and core area of consideration of this study entitled "Perceptions and experiences of integration for refugee learners." In this study I focused on refugee learners from African countries Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Kenya. It offers them a voice and makes them actors in their own stories. My study is intended to inform the reader of the personal experiences of refugees within a South African context shedding light on the specifics of access to and support from social services and other institutional and informal actors. It was necessary to employ multiple research instruments to analyse the experiences of refugees who attend the site where I am currently based as an educator. Preliminary questionnaires completed by refugee learners revealed themes integral to their experience and perception of integration: living arrangements, social resources, and education. These themes were further explored one-on-one interviews, focus group discussion and a snap survey. It is my view that institutional resources already in place by stakeholders are not fully utilised as refugee learners are often an after-thought in the service provision for citizen children. Refugee learners encounter difficulties in accessing education facilities and living arrangements do not consistently meet protection requirements. As a result, refugee learners frequently experience isolation and confusion regarding their present and future stakes in South Africa. Based on these findings, this study will make recommendations for policy design and development of programme for refugee integration within the broader South African society. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2006.

The last ten years has witnessed the inflow of a large number of new immigrant and refugee children, many from Africa, into Canada. These new immigrants and displaced persons (refugees) undergo a cycle of adaptation in a new society; a process that takes much longer time than the host society allows them. Most children of refugees and new immigrants enter the school system few months after their arrival in Canada when they have barely had the time to adapt to their new socio-cultural environment. However, little research has been done on the cultural adaptation of African immigrant and refugee youth in the Canadian educational system. / This study examined the social integration and educational experiences of teenage immigrant and refugee youth mainly from minority backgrounds in their first few years of contacts with the Quebec educational system. Using a qualitative methodology, interviews were conducted with ten youth, eight parents, four community leaders, two social service reception center workers and a school administrator together with information from focus group discussions with a number of youth and parents from the same backgrounds. The cultural and acculturating patterns that emerged in the context of school, family, peers, and community as well as the way in which the respondents negotiate, create, and maintain their identities were examined. / The findings showed that culture and cultural adaptation play very significant roles in the social and educational integration of immigrant and refugee children in Canadian society. They further pointed to how acculturation difficulties have led to many of these children feeling less motivated to study, losing interest in education, or dropping out of the school system altogether. / Implications of this research for curriculum development in education and social work practice with this population group are offered. These include the need for social service professionals and educators working with refugee youth to have an understanding of the different needs and history or cultural context of the country of origin of the refugees. Others are the need for teachers to be culturally responsive and competent as they deal with increasingly diverse student populations. Also of equal importance for policy formulators in the educational field is the need for curriculum that is designed to address the distinctive challenges of acculturation that these new arrivals face especially at the High School levels in Quebec. / Recommendations are made for directions for future research in the social work and education fields including structuring a longitudinal study to follow these youth participants over a period of time to examine the evolution of their ethnic identity, bicultural development, cultural values, their educational attainment and the challenges they face as adults. Furthermore, a nationwide or an inter-provincial study with similar population groups (with language as a significant variable) would provide a broader understanding of the integration issues associated with this population group.

South Africa’s borders were opened up in 1994 after Nelson Mandela became president. Since then South Africa has been battling xenophobia as immigrants from African nations started to come to the rainbow nation for a better life away from persecution, civil wars, and extreme poverty. Still, up until 2008 when massive riots broke out in Alexandria Township in Gauteng, xenophobia was an unknown word to most people outside academic, social work, and government circles. This has all changed now as 2008 will in all likelihood be remembered as the year when xenophobic violence erupted in South Africa and became a general feature in our daily media bulletins, prime time television broadcasts, and in our society as a whole. The South African university where the current study took place was also affected by xenophobia although without any displays of public violence. The current study sought to understand and describe the lived experience of xenophobia by individual, international, African students at a South African university. The study adopted a qualitative approach and the methodology used was multiple case studies employing Tesch’s model of content analysis. The findings of the study showed that the research participants, as a combined group, have lived through a wide range of xenophobic experiences excluding physical violence and that the research participants’ personal characteristics influenced their exposure to and experience of xenophobia. The study contributed to the understanding of the lived experience of xenophobia within a South African university by international, African students.

Due to the protracted nature of forced displacement, a majority of refugees spend their entire academic cycles in exile (Milner & Loescher, 2011). While some successfully navigate their educational trajectories, others are unable to complete basic education. Despite the important role education plays in emergency, displacement, and resettlement, refugee education remains under-researched. There is a dearth of research that has investigated what factor(s) at individual, family, and school levels contribute to children and youth’s school persistence and dropout amidst displacement. This study aimed to fill this substantial gap in the literature by taking a balanced, comprehensive approach to investigate the experiences of children and youth in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. Using a sequential mixed-methods design, this study examined the different factors that influenced the schooling of children and youth in Kakuma Refugee Camp. This study found that family poverty, inability to afford school uniforms and supplies, school uniform policy, living without parents/guardians, and family responsibilities were some of the major reasons that contributed to school dropout. By contrast, different types of support—financial, emotional, or academic—received from family members, teachers, and peers mainly influenced students’ persistence, despite persistent barriers in schooling. This study finds that ensuring educational access and persistence was not the role of a single stakeholder in education—i.e., a family member (parent), a head teacher, a teacher, or a student. Instead, different actors in children and youth’s sociocultural environments could play a role in influencing their decisions to (dis)continue education. The findings from this study not only contribute to expanding the knowledge base of education in emergencies, but they also support educators and practitioners who are providing and improving education for displaced populations, as well as policymakers within the Ministry of Education working to strengthen education systems and to foster access to quality education. My research findings may also prove meaningful in understanding the school persistence of school-aged children and youth in other refugee-hosting countries around the world, including the United States, and other mobile and marginalized populations in non-conflict settings.

Global forced displacement is on the rise with 32.5 million people currently living as refugees, about half of whom are school-aged children and youth. Within this context, refugee inclusion in host country education systems has emerged as a growing policy priority in an effort to improve education access and quality. However, there is limited research on the impacts of the policy shift and many challenges remain. Addressing this gap, this dissertation examines the internal and external influences on host country refugee education policy decisions, the ways refugee inclusion in national education systems interacts with social cohesion, and the role of the global aid system in facilitating the inclusion of refugees. Data for this comparative case study across Lebanon and Turkey are based on 47 semi-structured interviews with education actors engaged in the response to the Syrian crisis at the global, regional, national, and local levels to examine the assumptions, influences, processes, and practices of refugee inclusion in national education systems. This dissertation is presented in three distinct papers. The first examines why policies of refugee inclusion were enacted, the timing of such reforms, and contextual reasons why reforms took the shape they did. Drawing on policy transfer scholarship, my findings reveal that some of the drivers to embrace global refugee policies include expectations for crisis resolution, calculation of political and economic risks and benefits, and the operational realities of their education systems. The second paper questions the logic that policies of inclusion necessarily support social cohesion and sustainable peace in refugee-hosting contexts. I apply the '4Rs' framework of Redistribution, Recognition, Representation, and Reconciliation (Novelli, Lopes Cardozo & Smith, 2017) to analyze the ways that education interventions in support of refugee inclusion have contributed to social tension in Lebanon and Turkey while providing and important opportunity to address longstanding issues of marginalization and exclusion beyond refugees. The final paper builds on constructivist international relations theory to explore the relationship between the global refugee education policy agenda, the interests of donor states, and what that means for international responsibility-sharing, a foundational component of the refugee inclusion movement. I argue that there is a complex relationship between efforts to include refugees in national education systems and the national interests of donor countries including discouraging onward migration, promoting stability and social cohesion in neighboring regions, and reinforcing global hierarchies in the international system. Findings across the three papers contribute to theoretical and empirical debates around refugee education and humanitarian and development action. I conclude by pulling together themes that run through the dissertation and discussing theoretical and empirical contributions across the three papers.

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Low achievement, low attendance, and high dropout levels characterize immigrant student populations in cosmopolitan Canadian schools. This thesis identifies the lack of understanding in the community in urban multicultural Alberta as the prime cause of the struggle encountered by new immigrant students in school. The thesis incorporates the experiences of six new immigrant students to promote an authentic curriculum of learning and teaching to meet the needs of these learners. It posits that an authentic curriculum is unlikely without input from learners. The method used Hans-Georg Gadamer’s approach to hermeneutics and phenomenology, with the researcher asking the six African participants to share their stories in the African storytelling fashion in which no one dominates the discussion. The conversations were analyzed and interpreted to provide insight into the life-worlds of the participants. Ted Aoki’s multilayered curriculum of curriculum-as-planned, curriculum-as-lived experience and the “zone of between” are seen as a beneficial practice inclusive of all students. / viii, 139 leaves ; 28 cm