After some months of maternity leave I will start working in April and not in my new nice office at HiOA, but in Cape Town at Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). I got a research grant from HiOA and will stay at CPUT at their Centre for International Teacher education as a visiting scholar. I hope that my stay will bring new knowledge that I can bring home with me and share with students and colleagues at HiOA and academia in general. I am sure the stay will contribute positively to my PhD work on history education in South Sudan. CPUT has a big project on social cohesion and education and has done a lot of research within teacher education in the post-apartheid period. I hope to learn from their research when working on teaching methods and curriculum in the post contlict/conflict setting of South Sudan. I will keep you updated on my work during my stay.
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2016 as been a productive academic year for me. Late December I managed to publish my second article in my PhD dissertation. Since I am doing an article based dissertation consisting of three articles and a mantle I am happy to have completed two articles in international journals. This second publication written together with my supervisor Anders Breidlid titled: Teaching the violent past in secondary schools in newly independent South Sudan can be found in the South African journal “Education as Change” together with excellent articles by colleagues such as Christina Cappy, Mario Novelli, Yusuf Sayed and Thomas Salmon. This special issue of the journal focuses on teachers and social cohesion in the global south and gives us insight into countries such as Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Myanmar and Pakistan.
In South Sudan, the youngest nation in the world who gained their independence July 9th 2011, few youths get the chance to attend secondary education. Especially few girls. The education system has suffered enormously due to decades of civil war. The national education statistical booklet for the republic of South Sudan 2013 reports 46,567 students in secondary school, senior 1-4 (GoSS 2014). At a national level, the net enrollment rate for secondary education was 2% (GoSS 2014). It is crucial for the future of South Sudan to educate the coming generation and to give educational opportunities to all the South Sudanese that are now following Kenyan and Ugandan secondary school curriculums, where they do not focus on teaching the South Sudan history. One of the students in secondary school in South Sudan told me that: Education is one of the tools which can unite South Sudan and break ethnic barriers (secondary school student, senior 2). I strongly agree with the central role of education, especially in conflict. In my view, it is crucial that South Sudanese learn their own history – this might be one tool to unite South Sudanese and break ethnic barriers. Another step is what is happening in school compounds around South Sudan– games and sport competitions. Sport is in fact one of the few things that students mention unite the South Sudanese today. Another uniting factor might be the singing of the new national anthem. As one South Sudanese teacher told me: …but we are different tribes, but history is bringing us together because I am now singing the national anthem from South Sudan. I need peace. You also sing that you are from South Sudan but you are from a different tribe. But what come to your mind, if you tell your students I am from Bari, Lotuko but we have just sung the national anthem that unite us (Secondary school history teacher, Interview). During my fieldwork in both 2014 and 2015 I witnessed hundreds of secondary school students sing their national anthem together in the school compound. It was moving and it gave me hope, hope for South Sudan. However, in South Sudan education, particularly secondary education is a privileged for the few. Even though they are few, they are the resourceful few that might be the leaders of tomorrow in South Sudan. They need to get quality secondary education. This education need to foster national unity as the aforementioned student said – to break ethnic barriers. Education need to be prioritized, also in the midst of the renewed conflict in South Sudan, the one that started in Juba July 2016. It certainly feels good to have published my first article: Focused Ethnographic Research on Teaching and Learning in Conflict Zones: History Education in South Sudan. The article analyzes how central features of focused ethnography produce knowledge on teaching and learning history in conflict zones. It argues how five specific challenges of research in conflict zones are addressed through the methods of video observation, ‘hanging out’, and interviews. Through empirical examples from my first period of fieldwork in South Sudan, 2014 the article illustrates how the challenges of restricted access, psychological stress, complexity, positionality of the researcher, and unpredictability might be addressed in research on teaching and learning history in a society divided by ethnic conflicts.
Access the article here: Focused Ethnographic Research on Teaching and Learning in Conflict Zones: History Education in South Sudan. In course 3b in the Master Programme in Multicultural and International education, the students have this year written an article debating central issues within education in their country of origin. One of our students, Henry Mutebe from Uganda recently got his piece published in The Independent in Uganda. It is amazing how newly acquired knowledge from HiOA can raise debate about vital educational issues in Uganda. It highlight the importance of education on several levels. First it is an example of how education, and in this particular example education from HiOA can make a difference out there. Secondly, the article raises the fundamental question of relevance in Ugandan education underlining results and the discriminating nature of English as a language of instruction. Please, read this article of one of our Master students: Fundamental questions about high failures rates at Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE)
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