Launch: Journal on Education in Emergencies

I am delighted to introduce this first issue of the Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE) and proud to see how far we have come as a field. Since 2000, both the community and the movement have grown substantially. Despite this exponential growth in the field of EiE and calls to strengthen the evidence on which program decisions are based, rigorous research on EiE interventions and related topics remains scarce and diffuse, which makes it difficult for practitioners to find and apply up-to-date information in the field and difficult for scholars to build a body of knowledge and theory.

The scholarly, peer-reviewed JEiE aims to fill these gaps in rigorous EiE research. Building on the tradition of collaboration between practitioners and academics in the field of EiE, the JEiE's aim is to help improve learning in and across service-delivery, policy-making, and academic institutions by providing a space where scholars and practitioners publish rigorous quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research articles and robust and compelling field notes, both to inform policy and practice and to stir debate. The JEiE is intended to provide access to the ideas and evidence necessary to inform sound EiE programming, policy-making, funding decisions, and future research.

The JEiE specifically aims to:

1. Stimulate research and debate to build evidence and collective knowledge about EiE;
2. Promote learning across service-delivery organizations, and policy and academic institutions informed by evidence;
3. Define knowledge gaps and key trends to inform future research;
4. Publish rigorous scholarly and practitioner work that will set standards for evidence in the field.

This first issue contains four articles (three research articles and one field note) and one book review that cover a variety of scholarly/policy topics and types of research design. Topics include a review of research on history education in countries affected by conflict, the impact of psychosocial program interventions, and instructional techniques for teachers working with refugees. Research designs range from a review of empirical work on history education (Paulson), to an impact evaluation assessing the effects of the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) Healing Classrooms program (Torrente et al.), to a qualitative study of refugee education in urban Nairobi and the Kakuma refugee camp (Mendenhall et al.). The field notes piece addresses a key area for EiE work—the implementation of conflict-sensitive education in South Sudan (Reisman and Janke). Our first book review (Cole) presents Elisabeth King’s book, From Classrooms to Conflict in Rwanda, published last year by Cambridge University Press.

The full Journal on Education in Emergencies can be downloaded for free from the INEE website. The full abstracts of the articles in the first issue are also published below.

Please consider submitting your EiE-related studies for future editions of the JEiE. We invite you to join us in this collective endeavor, which we believe will deepen and broaden the power of the EiE social movement.

Abstracts from the first issue of the JEiE

“Whether and How?” History Education About Recent and Ongoing Conflict: A Review of Research
Julia Paulson

This article reviews research on history education that addresses recent or ongoing conflict since 1990. History education is recognized as a key site for constructing identity, transmitting collective memory, and shaping “imagined communities,” which makes its revision or reform a complex and important part of Education in Emergencies work. The article reviews 42 empirical studies from 11 countries, exploring whether recent conflict forms part of national curricula and, where it does, how this teaching is approached. Young people learn about recent conflict in all of the cases reviewed; in the majority, curriculum is one source for this learning, but in some cases the history of recent conflict is taught without curricular guidance or not at all. Where recent conflict is taught, the review finds a reliance on a traditional, collective memory approach to disseminating national narratives, although often in social studies rather than history classrooms. In many cases, these narratives are topdown and ethno-nationalist and rely on devices like mythical past unity and the exceptionalism of conflict. The review concludes by suggesting that actors undertaking a revision or reform of history curriculum attend to recent conflict as an “active past” and offers some promising ideas for approaching such a past in history curricula.

Improving the Quality of School Interactions and Student Well-being: Impacts of One Year of a School-Based Program in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Catalina Torrente, Brian Johnston, Leighann Starkey, Edward Seidman, Anjuli Shivshanker, Nina Weisenhorn, Jeannie Annan, and J. Lawrence Aber

Improving the quality of education for millions of children worldwide has become a global priority. This study presents results from the first experimental evaluation to test the impact of a universal school-based program on (1) the quality of school interactions (i.e., students’ perceptions of the level of support/care and predictability/ cooperation in their school and classrooms), and (2) students’ subjective well-being (i.e., peer victimization and mental health problems). The study took place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a low-income country affected by decades of conflict. The evaluation employed a cluster-randomized trial, where the unit of randomization was clusters of two to six schools. Included in the analyses were 3,857 students in second through fourth grades, who attended sixty-three schools nested in thirty-nine clusters. After one year of partial implementation, multilevel analyses showed promising but mixed results. The program had a significant positive impact on students’ perceptions of supportive and caring schools and classrooms, but a negative impact on their sense of predictability and cooperation. The program’s average effect on students’ subjective well-being was not statistically significant, but differential impacts were found for various subgroups of students. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the study and future directions for research in this field.

Improving the quality of education for millions of children worldwide has become a global priority. This study presents results from the first experimental evaluation to test the impact of a universal school-based program on (1) the quality of school interactions (i.e., students’ perceptions of the level of support/care and predictability/ cooperation in their school and classrooms), and (2) students’ subjective well-being (i.e., peer victimization and mental health problems). The study took place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a low-income country affected by decades of conflict. The evaluation employed a cluster-randomized trial, where the unit of randomization was clusters of two to six schools. Included in the analyses were 3,857 students in second through fourth grades, who attended sixty-three schools nested in thirty-nine clusters. After one year of partial implementation, multilevel analyses showed promising but mixed results. The program had a significant positive impact on students’ perceptions of supportive and caring schools and classrooms, but a negative impact on their sense of predictability and cooperation. The program’s average effect on students’ subjective well-being was not statistically significant, but differential impacts were found for various subgroups of students. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the study and future directions for research in this field.

Quality Education for Refugees in Kenya: Pedagogy in Urban Nairobi and Kakuma Refugee Camp Settings
Mary Mendenhall, Sarah Dryden-Peterson, Lesley Bartlett, Caroline Ndirangu, Rosemary Imonje, Daniel Gakunga, Loise Gichuhi, Grace Nyagah, Ursulla Okoth, and Mary Tangelder

This article examines the quality of education available to refugees in Kenya, with a particular focus on instruction. By providing empirical data about instruction in a refugee education context, the article supports anecdotal accounts and strengthens agency-led evaluations. It is based on a qualitative case study research project conducted at eight primary schools, four in Nairobi and four in the Kakuma refugee camp in northwestern Kenya. The article documents the instructional practices used in these schools to demonstrate the centrality of lecture in lesson presentation; teachers’ reliance on factual questions and the lack of open-ended and pupil-initiated questions; limited comprehension checks; and the absence of conceptual learning. Drawing from the perspectives of the teachers who were interviewed, the article argues that quality instructional practices for refugees are constrained by several key factors: limited resources, including low funding, significant overcrowding, and a lack of teaching and learning materials; a lack of pedagogical training and content knowledge; and curriculum and language policies. The article concludes with implications for education policy related to refugee teachers, and the content and structure of teacher training and professional development for these and other teachers working in refugee settings.

Conflict-Sensitive Teacher Education: Viewing EDC’s Experience with the South Sudan Teacher Education Project through a Conflict-Sensitive Lens
Lainie Reisman and Cornelia Janke

Using the USAID-funded South Sudan Teacher Education Project (SSTEP) as a case study, this paper examines the emerging guidance on the design and implementation of teacher education policy and programming in conflict-sensitive environments. We refer in particular to the guidelines and conceptual frameworks provided by the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) in its 2013 “INEE Guidance Note on Conflict Sensitive Education,” and “Minimum Standards for Education,” which were contextualized specifically for South Sudan. These works provide a conflict-sensitive lens through which to view the SSTEP design and implementation.

It is important to note that this is a retroactive analysis. SSTEP, which was implemented by Massachusetts-based Education Development Center (EDC) from 2011 to 2014, was designed and largely implemented before the INEE published its CSE guidance documents. This perspective allows us to review how events actually unfolded, and to speculate whether and how they might have been different had the CSE teacher training guidance been applied. More specifically, it allows us to consider what the outcome might have been had a full and robust conflict analysis been undertaken before initiating SSTEP. This paper is intended primarily for policy makers, practitioners, program designers, and researchers who are working to improve education in fragile and conflict-affected environments