A capability approach to language education in the Gaza Strip: “To plant hope in a land of despair”

This article proposes a shift away from competence models (Byram 1997) toward a more holistic approach in language education. Drawing on original critical participatory action research with English teachers in the Gaza Strip (Palestine), Imperiale argues that the capability approach (Sen 1985; Nussbaum 2000) offers a potential framework for understanding and co-constructing language education in precarious circumstances such as those in Gaza. The participants in this study are followed through their process of nourishing what Nussbaum (2006) considers the three capabilities in education: affiliation, narrative imagination and critical examination. Their work also nurtured the further capability of voice and agency, which, in the specific context of Gaza, intersects with acts of aesthetic, cultural and linguistic resistance

Review essay

THE GAZE OF THE WEST AND FRAMINGS OF THE EAST, SHANTA NAIR-VENUGOPAL (ED.) (2012) Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, XV + 264 pp. ISBN: 978-0-230-30292-1, h/bk, £66.0

The capabilities approach: fostering contexts for enhancing mental health and wellbeing across the globe

Concerted efforts have been made in recent years to achieve equity and equality in mental health for all people across the globe. This has led to the emergence of Global Mental Health as an area of study and practice. The momentum that this has created has contributed to the development, implementation and evaluation of services for priority mental disorders in many low- and middle-income countries. This paper discusses two related issues that may be serving to limit the success of mental health initiatives across the globe, and proposes potential solutions to these issues. First, there has been a lack of sophistication in determining what constitutes a ‘good outcome’ for people experiencing mental health difficulties. Even though health is defined and understood as a state of ‘wellbeing’ and not merely an absence of illness, mental health interventions tend to narrowly focus on reducing symptoms of mental illness. The need to also focus more broadly on enhancing subjective wellbeing is highlighted. The second limitation relates to the lack of an overarching theoretical framework guiding efforts to reduce inequalities and inequities in mental health across the globe. This paper discusses the potential impact that the Capabilities Approach (CA) could have for addressing both of these issues. As a framework for human development, the CA places emphasis on promoting wellbeing through enabling people to realise their capabilities and engage in behaviours that they subjectively value. The utilization of the CA to guide the development and implementation of mental health interventions can help Global Mental Health initiatives to identify sources of social inequality and structural violence that may impede freedom and individuals’ opportunities to realise their capabilities

Intercultural education in times of restricted travel: lessons from the Gaza Strip

This article draws upon a research project on intercultural language education conducted online between 2014 and 2017 with people living in the Gaza Strip (Palestine). Because the Gaza Strip has been under blockade since 2007, people cannot travel in and out freely. This context thus prompts educators and scholars to reflect on intercultural competence from a context of protracted crisis and of forced immobility. This study considers pre-service and in-service English teachers’ understandings of intercultural competence and how these educators encourage intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in their classrooms in the Gaza Strip, where neither teachers, nor students, may have travelled abroad or experienced a face-to-face intercultural encounter. Based on this analysis, this article argues that frameworks for intercultural education and ICC need to capture non-movement and the lack of face-to-face intercultural encounters as agentic in definitions of interculturality. In other words, ICC should be conceptualised in terms of the actual freedoms and opportunities that individuals have to develop and nurture it. In order to propose such a model, this article connects ICC with the capabilities approach (Nussbaum, 2011; Sen, 1999), the capability of mobility (de Haas, 2010), and with the capacity to aspire (Appadurai, 2004)

Developing language education in the Gaza Strip: pedagogies of capability and resistance

The importance of language education, and education more generally, in contexts of protracted crisis and emergencies is widely acknowledged as a potent tool for nurturing the wellbeing of individuals. It is also important in fostering development within afflicted societies. Despite this and an increasing interest in the improvement of the quality of education in these contexts (UNHCR, 2017; UNESCO, 2017; UNRWA, 2011), there has been scant scholarly attention given to language education models that emerge from those vulnerable settings, and to how they may differ from competence approaches developed in peace-time and in contexts of free mobility. Grounded in the theoretical framework of the capabilities approach for a holistic understanding of language education (Sen, 1999; Nussbaum, 2000; Crosbie, 2014), and motivated by rare empirical research investigating language pedagogies in contexts of pain and pressure, this study explores and co- constructs a grounded model for language education in the context of the siege of the Gaza Strip (Palestine). The Gaza Strip has been under siege since 2007, when Israel declared it ‘hostile territory’. The siege of Gaza prevents the free circulation of people, goods, and basic materials. As a result, two million people live, many as refugees of long standing, in a condition of ‘forced immobility’ (Stock, 2016) and worsening living conditions. These have been further affected detrimentally by three military operations in the last decade. The siege affects people’s mental and physical wellbeing, and the development of Palestinian society. In addition to the military hegemony, an epistemological hegemony shaped by orientalising tendencies perturbs all narratives about the ‘question of Palestine’ (Said, 1979; 1980; 1986). The chosen research methodology involves a cycle of critical participatory action research (CPAR), conducted online. The CPAR consists in the development, delivery, observation, analysis and evaluation of a series of specially designed workshops with 13 pre-service English teachers from the Gaza Strip. The aim of the research design is to investigate localized, critical, and creative language pedagogies. The workshop series focuses on the use of creative methods in language education, specifically on the use of Palestinian ‘Arts of Resistance’. The findings in this thesis demonstrate that: (a) pre-service English teachers value teaching approaches which move beyond competency-driven aims and instead engage with students’ dreams, hopes, values, and wellbeing; (b) the capabilities approach offers a lens through which language pedagogy can be framed within contexts of particular vulnerability; (c) participants value the use of Palestinian arts-based methods, as these enable a pedagogical practice which connects politics and aesthetics; and (d) the online network established during the research encounter shaped and was shaped by materiality and in relationality. A synthesis of these findings provides a metaphorical representation of an ecological language education in the context of pain and pressure

The role of stories in the design of an online language course: ethical considerations on a cross-border collaboration between the UK and the Gaza Strip

This article discusses the process of negotiating the storyline for videos developed as part of an online Arabic language course. The project was guided by a social-justice-through-education agenda, explicitly aiming to redress the high unemployment rate of language graduates in the Gaza Strip. We illustrate how the international team designing the course gradually moved from talking about intercultural communication to doing intercultural communication during the process of creating the course materials. We also explore the meanings that the stories of the language course carry from the distinct perspectives of the teams based in Scotland and in the Gaza Strip

Pedagogies of hope and resistance: English language education in the context of the Gaza Strip, Palestine

No abstract available

Improving refugee teacher development in Lebanon and Jordan: nurturing teacher identity, relationships, and agency

No abstract available

'I need to know what to say when children are crying’: a language needs analysis of Scottish primary educators learning Arabic

This article discusses the language needs analysis which informed the development of a beginner Arabic language course for Scottish primary education staff who work with Arabic-speaking refugee children and families. Interviews and focus group were carried out with: Scottish educators; Arabic-speaking refugee children; and parents/carers. They highlighted the following language needs for the course: (a) language for hospitality; (b) language for wellbeing; and (c) language for school. In this article we highlight the language needs as identified by refugee pupils and their families and we start a discussion on the importance of teaching a refugee language within formal educational settings

Welcoming Languages

No abstract available