Adamawa primary education research: final report

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Adamawa primary education research: executive summary

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The Expendable Citizen:Patriotism, Sacrifice, and Sentiment in American Culture

This study argues that the American citizen’s choice to perform or not perform sacrificial national duties has been heavily mediated by sentimental representations of sacrifice in popular narratives. Through an analysis of the American captivity narrative from its origins in the seventeenth century up to its current state in the contemporary period, this project also asserts that race plays a central a role in defining the type of citizen who should perform the most traumatic and costly of national sacrifices. Based on the implied reader’s sentimental identification with the suffering, white female captive, clear racial and cultural demarcations are made between the captor and the captive. These strong demarcations are facilitated through the captive’s choice to perform sacrifices that will sustain her social and racial status as a privileged and authentic identity. Her successful defense of her cultural and racial purity from a racialized threat heightens her ethos, investing her marginalized identity with power and influence. This representation of the suffering, sacrificial female captive who gains legitimacy via her fulfillment of national duty offers a sentimental model of civic duty for American citizenry to emulate. In addition, the sentimental representation of sacrifice in the captivity narrative not only stabilizes an authentic national collective, but also suggests to marginalized persons that national sacrifice can supply legitimacy and privilege. In opposition to this narrative representation of legitimacy gained through sacrifice, Indigenous authors Mourning Dove and Leslie Marmon Silko depict the sentimental performance of sacrificial duty as a dangerous discourse that internally colonizes those who desire legitimacy in the United States. These Indigenous counter-narratives show clearly that the narrativization of sentimentality and sacrifice more often than not defines America and its authentically pure citizens as worth the price of death

The female teacher trainee scholarship scheme: operational research study for UNICEF Girls Education Project Phase 3 (GEP3)

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Research into self-help groups and speed school graduates' experiences of schooling

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Education and work: children’s lives in rural sub-Saharan Africa

This paper proposes a dynamic conceptual framework – the edu-workscape – for understanding how rural children in sub-Saharan Africa navigate three key gendered social arenas: the household, school and workplaces. Focusing on school, in particular, the paper highlights the violence, harm and labour that occur there, and argues that learning, work and harm co-exist across all three institutional domains, and in context, and should therefore be considered holistically

Troubled spaces: negotiating school–community boundaries in northern Nigeria

Community participation is a vital component of the educational decentralisation policies that are now widespread in Nigeria. In this paper, we explore school–community relations in different localities in northern Nigeria, where there is both very little inter-generational experience of schooling and minimal engagement by local communities in social and political management processes. Drawing on ethnographic data in and around six primary schools in Adamawa State, northern Nigeria, we problematise school–community relations and highlight the complexities and tensions in their social interactions. This we do by focusing on the school boundary that both connects and distinguishes it from the surrounding community. In particular, we explore the agonistic spatial and temporal regulation that operates at the school boundary, with specific attention to the different ways that students, teachers and the community comply or resist such strategies of governmentality. In concluding, we argue that it is imperative to think through the implications for/of international education and development policies as they are launched in diverse localities. This would help to avoid accounts of local deficit that are so readily invoked when top-down policies reach communities

Gender violence in schools: taking the ‘girls-as-victims’ discourse forward

This paper draws attention to the gendered nature of violence in schools. Recent recognition that schools can be violent places has tended to ignore the fact that many such acts originate in unequal and antagonistic gender relations, which are tolerated and ‘normalised’ by everyday school structures and processes. After examining some key concepts and definitions, we provide a brief overview of the scope and various manifestations of gender violence in schools, noting that most research to date has focused on girls as victims of gender violence within a heterosexual context and ignores other forms such as homophobic and girl violence. We then move on to look at a few interventions designed to address gender violence in schools in the developing world and end by highlighting the need for more research and improved understanding of the problem and how it can be addressed

Becoming a teacher: experiences of female trainees in initial teacher education in northern Nigeria

This article foregrounds the experiences of female trainees on a scholarship programme for initial teacher education aimed at increasing the numbers of qualified female teachers from rural northern Nigeria, and boosting female pupil enrolments. Challenging conditions in colleges of education, including curricular shortcomings, overcrowding, limited resources and inadequate learning support were compounded by non-academic factors – especially financial, and gendered constraints. Collectively, they threatened student retention, learning and attainment, and the programme’s gender equity goals. Findings highlight the need to move beyond increasing numbers of female student-teachers, to improving quality in teacher education, paying attention to out-of-college conditions too