Announcing JEiE Vol. 3: Special Issue of the Journal on Education in Emergencies

We are pleased to announce the publication of the Journal on Education in Emergencies, Volume 3, Number 1.

Every theme that appears in the Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE) is by definition timely and important. In this special issue of JEiE, we focus on education and peacebuilding.

Although humanitarians for many years credited education with creating or fostering peace, the understanding of this relationship grew more nuanced at the start of the 2000s, with the publication of The Two Faces of Education in Ethnic Conflict (Bush and Saltarelli 2000). This publication ushered in a period of reflection on the role of education, not just in promoting peace but in promoting conditions for conflict through uneven access, biased classroom practices, or negative ideological content (Brock 2011; Burde 2014; Burde, Kapit, Wahl, Guven, and Skarpeteig 2017; Gross and Davies 2015; King 2014; Ostby and Urdal 2010; Shields and Paulson 2015; Smith 2007). Although educators were as committed as always to the transformative potential and power of education, they were no longer as sanguine about its delivery or content in humanitarian crises.

At the same time, however, educators continued to pursue a deeper understanding of how, and under what conditions, education could promote peace or contribute to peacebuilding. Increased reflection among practitioners helped refocus this line of research on a more granular and systematic understanding of the mechanisms that could increase underlying conditions for peace. How might gender norms, for example, contribute to or undermine efforts to promote conditions considered important for peace? What are the implications of redistributive school financing for social cohesion?

With this new issue of JEiE — which consists of three research articles, one field note, and four book reviews — we return to the positive face of education as we examine its contributions to peacebuilding. The articles in this issue bring a range of analyses to this question, including a focus on social justice, reconciliation, inclusion, gender norms, and the importance of social cohesion.

The full JEiE Volume 3, Number 1 (PDF) can be downloaded for free, and the full articles, abstracts, and podcast interviews with the authors can be accessed on the INEE website.