Journal on Education in Emergencies: Volume 3, Number 1

JEiE Volume 3, Number 1 was published in July 2017. 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.

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

This paper lays out a theoretical and analytical framework for researching and reflecting on the peacebuilding role of education in conflict-affected contexts. The paper addresses the cultural translation of these concepts, highlighting the need for locally embedded interpretations.

This mixed-methods cluster-randomized controlled trial examines the impact of a teacher-training program that aimed to promote positive gender socialization in the conflict-affected region of Karamoja, Uganda. The theory of change suggests that the education system and teachers can play critical roles in promoting positive gender roles and gender equality.

Because improving equality in and through education is vital to social cohesion, this case study examines whether the no-fee school policy has equalized—or is perceived to have equalized—school resources and educational opportunities in basic education. 

This field note presents the case of the review of the curriculum framework in Somalia, a UNICEF-supported education intervention that intentionally engaged with the drivers of conflict. The note outlines how this mainstream education intervention can help to build a capacity for peace at various levels (individual, group, and policy) in terms of substance and process.

In Training for Model Citizenship, Molly Sundberg draws on her ethnographic fieldwork, as well as her experience as a development practitioner for the Swedish International Development Agency, to explore how citizens relate to the state in postgenocide Rwanda.

Childhood Deployed is based on author Susan Shepler's almost three decades of ethnographic research and other involvements in Sierra Leone. Shepler analyzes the implications of the participation of minors in Sierra Leone’s infamous civil war and the challenges to their postconflict reintegration.

Christopher Talbot and Aleesha Taylor's focus on Liberia’s recent educational history in Partnership Paradox is interesting, given the government’s announcement in 2016 of a new plan to privatize the country’s public pre-primary and primary school school system.

Rita Verma’s Critical Peace Education and Global Citizenship is simultaneously inspiring and terrifying—inspiring in the accounts it offers of highly interactive peace education outside the normal curriculum and in possibilities for activism, and terrifying in its exposure of the “Trump Effect” and how this legitimates racism.