CIE Logo


Home

Online Papers

Webography

Resources

Syllabus


Approach - Objective - Assignments - Readings - Weekly Schedule

 

SYLLABUS
Learning in Post-Conflict Situations - ED 794J

Fall 2002
Mondays, 1-4pm
273 Hills House South

Primary Facilitators:

Ash Hartwell - ashtrish@igc.org

Yvonne Shanahan - yvonnes@educ.umass.edu

With help from:

Fritz Affolter - fritz@educ.umass.edu

Vachel Miller - vmiller@educ.umass.edu

 

Approach and learning goals:

 

This course is being offered for the second time at the Center. It builds on strong interests within the Center in such areas as new conceptions of learning, understanding genocide, healing and reconstruction, and social capital. Many Center members are deeply concerned with the severity and spread of violent conflict throughout the world that focuses urgent attention on effective post-conflict community interventions. Many different kinds of situations have emerged, including refugee and displaced community situations, with a wide range of educational demands and implications. We believe that educational interventions are important, yet how does schooling fit within larger efforts to regenerate social support networks and community well-being? What do communities learn from conflict? What broad approaches to learning and community development might better facilitate healing, resilience, and the rebuilding of trust? Further, how can community interventions and policy initiatives account for the gendered impacts of conflict? These and other questions serve as the impetus for this course.

As primary facilitators, we have created an initial structure and sequence of topics that we believe are important in understanding learning in post-conflict situations. We hope that all participants will modify and build this course as we move through the topics. Our overall goal is to have a more fully developed course by the end of the semester - everyone's participation in that process is crucial. We understand our roles as learners in this process and facilitators of sessions, although we would be pleased if others stepped forward to take on specific topics. We will take a multi-dimensional approach to conflict and learning, with a focus on international settings, involving participants with both domestic and international interests.

 

Objective

 

The course will provide a setting for both individual and collective learning. Individually each participant will reflect on their personal and professional experiences and interests, set their learning objectives for the course, and develop a project. The project may be done collaboratively, or with one or more other course participants. Collectively, the course objective is to examine opportunities for establishing learning environments within post-conflict situations. We will examine learning in post-conflict situations through three inter-related lenses:

· The nature, mapping and roots of social conflict:

o What is conflict? How has it evolved during the 20th and 21st centuries?

o How can we map conflict zones throughout the world?

o What are the roots of conflict? How is conflict averted, how is peace built?

o How does conflict impact individual and community capacity for learning, for development?

o What are key sources of information, research and analysis on conflict prevention and peace building?


· Opportunities and experience providing education in post-conflict areas:

o Who are key actors, cases providing education in post-conflict areas?

o What are their policies, agendas, and projects? How have these evolved?

o What can we learn from these cases to guide future policy and practice?


· Learning and Peace Building

Fundamental to the course is an appreciation of what we know about the nature and process of learning, and how, within the crisis and challenge of post conflict contexts, learning environments can be created. We are interested in environments, or in the words of Jan Visser, 'learning ecologies', that contribute to individual and community well-being and development. The focus on learning, rather than schooling, broadens our focus to explicitly include psycho-social needs, the process of healing, building trust and the reconstruction of social relationships. Using the lens of learning and peace building we will critique and build on existing and proposed educational policies, practices and programs through questions such as:


o How can an education project (in a post-conflict area) create a sense of security for members of a community?

o How can participation in project design and implementation build connection and a sense of belong among participants and learners?

o How do education activities affirm the identity and potential of learners?

o How do education activities enable learners to sharpen their comprehension of reality and meaningfulness?

 

Assignments:

There are three course assignments:

1) An initial Reflection and Personal Project paper of 2-3 pages, with an annex, which

a. Describes your personal/professional experience(s) with a conflict situation, its meaning for you, and the implications of this event(s) on education and learning;

b. Sets out your personal expectations and learning objectives for the course, describing what you hope to learn, to achieve and produce;

c. Identifies resources - websites, papers/books, institutions, cases - that you believe will be useful in pursuing your objective (this is the annex).

This paper is due on 16 September.

2) A mid-term paper of approximately 15 pages that analyses a particular project or case, providing a critique and a set of recommendations for project development.

Due 28 October.

3) A final paper, presenting your course project. This may be either an individual or collective (2 or 3 persons) activity.

Due 9 December.

Readings:

There is a large and growing literature on education in post-conflict situations, much of this very recent and available through Internet. We will draw heavily on this source for the course, and to facilitate that we will make use of a website:

http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~educ870/PostConflict/index.htm

During the course we will be continually building this site, which now contains basic papers and texts, linked websites to organizations, universities and institutes working on conflict prevention, educational initiatives, and learning. We will also use the website to post papers arising from individual and collective work done in the course.

The newly published book, Helping Children Outgrow War, edited by CIE members Vachel Miller and Fritz Affolter, grew from the course last year, and will be distributed at our first class. All other material will be available through the course website. You will be asked to download, print and bring to class particular papers.

 

Weekly schedule:

This is a preliminary schedule, and will be adjusted as needed to 1) accommodate participants' needs for further exploration of particular themes and topics, 2) take advantage of new work, projects and resources that become available, 2) adjust for guest resource persons availability.

 

Week 1 - September 9 - Introduction - personal/professional experiences/expectations

Mapping of conflict areas, types of conflict I

Readings: Websites - FEWER and ENCORE

Helping Children Outgrow War

Week 2 - September 16 - Mapping of Conflict/ The roots of conflict - Part II

Readings: Collier. Causes of Conflict

E.Staub. Preventing Genocide

Week 3 - September 23- A mapping of education response to conflict I

Readings/References: UNESCO, UNICEF position papers

Case Studies

Week 4 - September 30 - A mapping of education response to conflict II

Readings/References: Save the Children Fund, DfID, .

Case Studies

Week 5 - October 7 - Education response to conflict III

Analysis of selected case studies

Week 6 - October 14 - Education response to conflict IV - A. Dykstra

Indicators of education through stages of reconstruction

Week 7 - October 21 - Approaches to Learning I

Readings/Reference: from: www.21learn.org

(21st Century Learning Initiative)

Articles by Caine and Caine, Abbot, and others.

Week 8 - October 28 - Approaches to Learning II

E. Staub. Preventing Genocide

Readings/Reference: www.21learn.org

Week 8 - November 4 - Review, reports from mid-term papers

Week 9 - November 11 - Indicators for psycho-social development and learning

Fritz Affolter - proposal for system of indicators

Week 10- November 18 - Strategies for Peace Building:

Paula Green and the Karuma Institute

Week 11 -November 25 - Review/Project development

Week 12 - December 2 - Presentation of Projects

Week 13 - December 9 - Presentation of Projects

Week 14 - December 6 - Synthesis and next steps.