EDUCATIONAL DILEMMAS UNCOVERED

It was by far one of the most successful and constructive events that I have attended. DUring the period between August 5th and 9th I attended the Workshop for Sustainable Blended Learning at Carey Insitute (the Refugees Educators Academy) in one of hte most beautiful outskirts of NY: Rennesevilla.  The event was amazing, due to the unbelievable calm and tranquille surrounding but also due to the diverse participants, from whom there was a lot to be learnt. THe hostility of Diana and Julie and the well-planned session were admirable. Below is the briefing of the event that came out from Carey Institute.  Fighting off jet-lag and the chronic exhaustion that is common among educators, a group of six dedicated, inspired teachers came together to explore Sustainable Blended Learning and build courses utilizing tools and templates developed by the Center for Learning in Practice on the  l earning.careyinstitute  platform. Participants included an international consu...

On August 29th I will be one of the presenters to this important webcast. Until writing those lines here there are around 200 who registered for the event. I did not finalize my PPT, however, I am very excited about it. THis is the final stage of a collaborative work between INEE & ECCN to develop this checklist, a checklist that would help practitioners who have an ICT componenet within their educatinal initiatives to use that componenet in a highly conflict sensitive manner. It was a process with a couple of iterations until it reached this final stage.  WEBCAST ANNOUNCEMENT: ECCN and INEE’s Technology and Education in Crises Task Team (TECTT) are jointly hosting this webcast to introduce a new tool called the  Checklist for ICT Interventions to Support Education in Crisis and Conflict Settings  (or ICT in EiCC Checklist). This information communication technologoy (ICT) tool was developed as a collaboration between ECCN members and staff and INEE TECTT memb...

HOW TO PLAN, DESIGN AND MANAGE ACCELERATED EDUCATION IN A CRISIS CONTEXT is the title of a course developed to be provided online for refugee educators, teachers and facilitators. During the Summer Workshop on Sustainable Blended Learning, that I have attended (August 6th - 9th) in NY, I was asked to choose a topic for my course. I had to think throroughly, all the others came from the academia and were developing their curricula online. I decided to make it on AE, becasue this is a topic: - I am so passionate about - I have a good understanidng about, due to my work on a consultancy peieve with UNHCR related to AE in the MENA region. - I know that there is material in Arabic, and the platform on which the course is being developed in also compabtible with the Arabic language. Below is a snapshot about the 4 week modular course develped on EUREKOS, Carey INstitute's platform: For whom is this course intended? This course is intended for educators, teachers, facili...

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is considered one of the greatest contributors to the development of evaluation policies and guidelines in the field of international development initiatives. According to the OECD, evaluation is a systemic and objective assessment, of an ongoing or completed project, programme or policy, its design, implementation and results. The goal of this undertaking is to “determine the relevance and fulfilment of objectives, developmental efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability. An evaluation should provide information that is credible and useful, enabling the incorporation of lessons learned into the decision-making process of both recipients and donors” (OECD, 1991,p.5). Evaluating what happened during and after the delivery of a development programme aims to observe if empowerment has been achieved. This involves tracking changes in relationships. However, due to the dynamic, complex and contextual nat...

“The use of information and communication technology (ICT) has the potential to support, enhance, and enable education for the most marginalized, affected by war, natural disasters, and the rapid spread of disease.”(Dahya, 2016, p.3) Despite those strong words, many scholars commented on the impact of ICT on learning and empowerment with great uncertainty. “It is generally believed that ICTs can empower teachers and learners…However, there are currently very limited, unequivocally compelling data to support this belief” (Trucano, 2005) . Dorothea Klein (2009), who viewed ICT4E as a sub-set of ICT for development (ICT4D), tried to understand why there is until now not enough evidence to prove specific impacts of technology on the (dis)empowerment of populations, to whom development programmes are directed. She highlighted two reasons. First, on the theoretical level, there is a mainstream trend of conceptualizing the impact of ICT using economic growth discourses “which is ...

Beyond being a human right, it can be viewed as a multi-faceted driver to development: The development of refugees as communities and individuals; the development of their host countries and the development of their original home country. For refugees:   Education in general, in the context of an emergency, especially that of conflict/crisis, can play a “critical role in normalizing the situation for the child and in minimizing the psychosocial stresses experienced when emergencies result in the sudden and violent destabilization of the child’s immediate family and social environment” (Pigozzi, 1999, p.2). Education can be a support mechanism, supporting children and youth in their struggle to deal with their daily life challenges and with their future. When enrolled in an educational setting children and youth are able to deal with their worries, aspirations, and hopes more confidently and effectively. Approximately one third of the population affected by the Syrian...

Historically, higher education has been used as a means of reproducing the elites of countries. However, this started to be challenged and changed since the end of world war II (Bienefeld, 2003), and specifically after the announcement the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 declaring that “Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit (Article 26.1) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. (Article 26.2)”. Three years later, the ‘Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees’ was declared. A supplementary protocol was attached to it in 1967. Contrary to the Un...

Refugees: There is an ongoing debate related to how to term Syrians, who have fled their home country in the past 6 years. Three prevalent terms used, especially in the media, to describe those who crossed the borders to seek refuge in another neighboring country: refugees, migrants and asylum seekers. Again, to stay aligned with internationally set and agreed upon definitions, this research will confine itself to the definition provided by the Convention and Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, 1967. A refugee is someone: “ owing to well- founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such ...

According to UNHCR, as per December 2015, the world is witnessing the highest levels of displacement on record, (i.e. since the UNHCR started collecting displacement data in 1951) with an unprecedented 65.3 million people who had to flee their homes globally. “Among them are nearly 21.3 million refugees. Statistics show that there are nearly 34,000 people who are forcibly displaced on a daily basis UNHCR ,n.d.- a)   and that there are nearly one in 100 people worldwide who are now displaced from their homes. Displacement levels are higher in some regions of the world than others. For example, more than one-in-twenty people living in the Middle East (5.6%) are currently displaced (PewResearch Center, 2016). Despite the fact that everyone’s right to education has been declared in the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ in 1948 (art., 26,  par.1 ), only 50 % of refugee children have access to primary education, while globally the average is above 90%. When they...

UNHCR has estimated that globally there are only 1% of refugee youth able to access higher education (UNHCR, 2014). Statistically this means that around 195,000 refugees out of the total 7.2 million refugee children and youth who completed secondary education will are able to access higher education (HE). If we try to compare that with the % of HE students across Organization For Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries we will find a discrepancy of 40%. In the later case there is an average of 41% of 25-34 year-olds who attended HE (OECD, 2014).  Access to HE matters a lot to refugees for various reasons. It serves as a very strong incentive to K-12 students. HE has been listed according to some research as a primary aim for displaced students (Refugee Support Network, 2011). HE is, as well, an issue of protection, as it maintains a sense of hope for a future,, and thereby decreases the engagement in violent and sectarian activities. However, HE of ref...