The governance of schools for internally displaced learners in Puntland, Somalia: a top-down or bottom-up approach to education peacebuilding?
- Authors: Ramaite, Adivhaho Florence
- Date: 2022-10-14
- Subjects: Peace-building Somalia Puntland , Internally displaced persons Education Somalia Puntland , School management and organization Somalia Puntland , Educational governance , Top-down and bottom-up design
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/406807 , vital:70309
- Description: This study examines educational governance in schools for internally displaced learners in Puntland, Somalia. Many Somalis have been internally displaced from the south and central of Somalia and neighbouring regions because of armed insurgence, as well as climate and ecological disasters. Communities of internally displaced Somalis who have settled in the north-eastern region of Somalia, together with the Ministry of Education and nongovernmental organisations such as Relief International, have established schools for internally displaced learners. The study uses interviews with teachers, school principals and school committee members to examine their experiences of how schools are governed, specifically in terms of the bottom-up and top-down approaches to peacebuilding education. This research study is the first of its kind to examine the experiences of education actors in internally displaced person schools in Somalia. It provides crucial, new information on northern NGOs and how they shape the governance of knowledge and resources in Somali schools and how Somali education actors interpret and respond to these interventions. Drawing on education studies and international relations, it develops a transdisciplinary framing of peacebuilding education and specifically focuses on the top-down and bottom-up approaches to peacebuilding education provision. It weaves these two disciplinary perspectives together to help establish the implications of the security sector in education and broadly post-conflict reconstruction. The study finds that donors, international NGOs and government actors use a top-down approach to education, which may sit at odds with local needs and priorities. It finds that Somali knowledge and values are marginalised in the curriculum and teachers’ professional development and that the distribution of resources such as teacher salaries and school feeding programmes is fragmented, opaque and lacking in accountability. The study emphasises that the exclusion of local voices may further contribute to the causes underlying conflict. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Political and International Studies, 2022
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2022-10-14
- Authors: Ramaite, Adivhaho Florence
- Date: 2022-10-14
- Subjects: Peace-building Somalia Puntland , Internally displaced persons Education Somalia Puntland , School management and organization Somalia Puntland , Educational governance , Top-down and bottom-up design
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/406807 , vital:70309
- Description: This study examines educational governance in schools for internally displaced learners in Puntland, Somalia. Many Somalis have been internally displaced from the south and central of Somalia and neighbouring regions because of armed insurgence, as well as climate and ecological disasters. Communities of internally displaced Somalis who have settled in the north-eastern region of Somalia, together with the Ministry of Education and nongovernmental organisations such as Relief International, have established schools for internally displaced learners. The study uses interviews with teachers, school principals and school committee members to examine their experiences of how schools are governed, specifically in terms of the bottom-up and top-down approaches to peacebuilding education. This research study is the first of its kind to examine the experiences of education actors in internally displaced person schools in Somalia. It provides crucial, new information on northern NGOs and how they shape the governance of knowledge and resources in Somali schools and how Somali education actors interpret and respond to these interventions. Drawing on education studies and international relations, it develops a transdisciplinary framing of peacebuilding education and specifically focuses on the top-down and bottom-up approaches to peacebuilding education provision. It weaves these two disciplinary perspectives together to help establish the implications of the security sector in education and broadly post-conflict reconstruction. The study finds that donors, international NGOs and government actors use a top-down approach to education, which may sit at odds with local needs and priorities. It finds that Somali knowledge and values are marginalised in the curriculum and teachers’ professional development and that the distribution of resources such as teacher salaries and school feeding programmes is fragmented, opaque and lacking in accountability. The study emphasises that the exclusion of local voices may further contribute to the causes underlying conflict. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Political and International Studies, 2022
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2022-10-14
The knowledge commons, pan-Africanism, and epistemic inequality: a study of CODESRIA
- Authors: Hoffmann, Nimi
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Pan-Africanism , Codesria , Equality -- Africa , Social justice -- Africa , Feminist criticism -- Africa , Sex discrimination against women -- Africa , Postcolonialism -- Africa , Women intellectuals -- Africa , Academic freedom -- Africa , Africans -- Intellectual life
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/60303 , vital:27764
- Description: This study is about the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). Conceived in 1964 and formalised in 1973, CODESRIA is the longest-standing pan-African intellectual organisation on the continent. It was established with the primary objective of fostering greater collaboration between African scholars, and has acquired a reputation for challenging the marginalisation and fragmentation of African scholarship. However, there has been no systematic account of this important organisation. This study aims to cast light on this organisation and its intellectual contributions in the post-independence period. It examines CODESRIA as a knowledge commons - a community of scholars that creates, manages and shares intellectual goods outside of the state and the market. It asks: what factors have shaped CODESRIA as a pan-African knowledge commons in the context of epistemic inequality? As a way of answering this question, it examines three key debates: the different meanings of pan-Africanism in CODESRIA, CODESRIA’s defence of the academic project during structural adjustment, and African feminists’ struggles to change CODESRIA. These debates exemplify the ways in which different generations of African scholars in the post - independence period have sought to make sense of and respond to the problems of inequality - both outside of CODESRIA and within CODESRIA. This thesis approaches CODESRIA as a case study. It combines a document analysis with semi-structured interviews to construct and critique key intellectuals' understandings of the organisational design and practices of CODESRIA, the nature of its community and intellectual work. It supplements this with a descriptive analysis of CODESRIA’s bibliometric and administrative data. The study finds that CODESRIA has forged a distinctive form of pan-Africanism that offers a non-governmental and intellectual alternative to state-centric and bureaucratic forms of pan-Africanism. As a powerful counter-narrative to prevailing ideas of African intellectual inferiority, pan-Africanism has been an important motivational source for establishing and cohering CODESRIA’s community. Although its pan-African organisational form has been complicated by the enduring influence of colonial frameworks and limited by the the material and institutional weaknesses of African universities, it has nevertheless acted as a mode of collective enquiry for troubling and expanding the colonial conception of Africa. This study further finds that structural adjustment fundamentally reshaped the intellectual and material underpinnings of CODESRIA with complex and ambiguous results. In the short term, CODESRIA’s analysis of structural adjustment led to considerable intellectual and organisational innovation so that it grew in size and influence. In the long-run, however, structural adjustment eroded the public universities upon which CODESRIA relied. This eroded the mechanisms to maintain its intellectual vigour and democratic character, and increased CODESRIA’s dependency on donors. The study also finds that the struggles of feminist scholars to change unequal gender norms in CODESRIA have been a source of significant intellectual and organisational renewal. Contestations over gender inequality within CODESRIA have given rise to a distinctive form of African feminism, which emphasises the historicity of gender relations in ways that reject essentialist and teleological accounts of African societies. Feminist struggles have also given rise to new standards of scholastic excellence that mark a meaningful departure from the skewed standards introduced under colonial rule. Nevertheless, the persistent minoritisation of female scholars in CODESRIA has significantly limited their capacity to effect institutional change, such that the ghettoization of feminist scholarship and the hollowing out of feminist discourses on gender remains a constant threat. The central argument of this study is that inequality can motivate marginalised members to engage in the collective action required to create and reshape knowledge commons, but it can also constrain their collective action and threaten the long-term sustainability of the commons. The collective agency of marginalised individuals is therefore central to the flourishing of knowledge commons. Second, knowledge commons are intimately dependent on public goods, such as universities. Public goods are plausibly the source, and therefore the limit, of knowledge commons’ capacity to flourish over the long-term. As a consequence, it is likely that knowledge commons are complements to public goods provision, rather than substitutes. Rethinking the knowledge commons in terms of the predicaments of African intellectual communities, I contend, provides new ways of understanding the possibilities, constraints and contradictions of knowledge commons in an unequal world. This study contributes to the empirical literature on African intellectual communities. In particular, it provides critical knowledge on a scholarly community that has not only endured, but has managed to thrive in a context of profound economic and political instability. This provides an indication of the institutions, practices, and intellectual resources that are required to ensure that African knowledge systems flourish over the long-term. This study also makes a theoretical contribution to the literature on knowledge commons, which are largely theorised using examples from the global North. It shows how reconceptualising knowledge commons in terms of inequality opens up new lines of empirical investigation. Building on existing commons research, it develops a methodological framework for comparative research on southern knowledge commons, which may also be of use for investigating commons in general.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
- Authors: Hoffmann, Nimi
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Pan-Africanism , Codesria , Equality -- Africa , Social justice -- Africa , Feminist criticism -- Africa , Sex discrimination against women -- Africa , Postcolonialism -- Africa , Women intellectuals -- Africa , Academic freedom -- Africa , Africans -- Intellectual life
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/60303 , vital:27764
- Description: This study is about the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). Conceived in 1964 and formalised in 1973, CODESRIA is the longest-standing pan-African intellectual organisation on the continent. It was established with the primary objective of fostering greater collaboration between African scholars, and has acquired a reputation for challenging the marginalisation and fragmentation of African scholarship. However, there has been no systematic account of this important organisation. This study aims to cast light on this organisation and its intellectual contributions in the post-independence period. It examines CODESRIA as a knowledge commons - a community of scholars that creates, manages and shares intellectual goods outside of the state and the market. It asks: what factors have shaped CODESRIA as a pan-African knowledge commons in the context of epistemic inequality? As a way of answering this question, it examines three key debates: the different meanings of pan-Africanism in CODESRIA, CODESRIA’s defence of the academic project during structural adjustment, and African feminists’ struggles to change CODESRIA. These debates exemplify the ways in which different generations of African scholars in the post - independence period have sought to make sense of and respond to the problems of inequality - both outside of CODESRIA and within CODESRIA. This thesis approaches CODESRIA as a case study. It combines a document analysis with semi-structured interviews to construct and critique key intellectuals' understandings of the organisational design and practices of CODESRIA, the nature of its community and intellectual work. It supplements this with a descriptive analysis of CODESRIA’s bibliometric and administrative data. The study finds that CODESRIA has forged a distinctive form of pan-Africanism that offers a non-governmental and intellectual alternative to state-centric and bureaucratic forms of pan-Africanism. As a powerful counter-narrative to prevailing ideas of African intellectual inferiority, pan-Africanism has been an important motivational source for establishing and cohering CODESRIA’s community. Although its pan-African organisational form has been complicated by the enduring influence of colonial frameworks and limited by the the material and institutional weaknesses of African universities, it has nevertheless acted as a mode of collective enquiry for troubling and expanding the colonial conception of Africa. This study further finds that structural adjustment fundamentally reshaped the intellectual and material underpinnings of CODESRIA with complex and ambiguous results. In the short term, CODESRIA’s analysis of structural adjustment led to considerable intellectual and organisational innovation so that it grew in size and influence. In the long-run, however, structural adjustment eroded the public universities upon which CODESRIA relied. This eroded the mechanisms to maintain its intellectual vigour and democratic character, and increased CODESRIA’s dependency on donors. The study also finds that the struggles of feminist scholars to change unequal gender norms in CODESRIA have been a source of significant intellectual and organisational renewal. Contestations over gender inequality within CODESRIA have given rise to a distinctive form of African feminism, which emphasises the historicity of gender relations in ways that reject essentialist and teleological accounts of African societies. Feminist struggles have also given rise to new standards of scholastic excellence that mark a meaningful departure from the skewed standards introduced under colonial rule. Nevertheless, the persistent minoritisation of female scholars in CODESRIA has significantly limited their capacity to effect institutional change, such that the ghettoization of feminist scholarship and the hollowing out of feminist discourses on gender remains a constant threat. The central argument of this study is that inequality can motivate marginalised members to engage in the collective action required to create and reshape knowledge commons, but it can also constrain their collective action and threaten the long-term sustainability of the commons. The collective agency of marginalised individuals is therefore central to the flourishing of knowledge commons. Second, knowledge commons are intimately dependent on public goods, such as universities. Public goods are plausibly the source, and therefore the limit, of knowledge commons’ capacity to flourish over the long-term. As a consequence, it is likely that knowledge commons are complements to public goods provision, rather than substitutes. Rethinking the knowledge commons in terms of the predicaments of African intellectual communities, I contend, provides new ways of understanding the possibilities, constraints and contradictions of knowledge commons in an unequal world. This study contributes to the empirical literature on African intellectual communities. In particular, it provides critical knowledge on a scholarly community that has not only endured, but has managed to thrive in a context of profound economic and political instability. This provides an indication of the institutions, practices, and intellectual resources that are required to ensure that African knowledge systems flourish over the long-term. This study also makes a theoretical contribution to the literature on knowledge commons, which are largely theorised using examples from the global North. It shows how reconceptualising knowledge commons in terms of inequality opens up new lines of empirical investigation. Building on existing commons research, it develops a methodological framework for comparative research on southern knowledge commons, which may also be of use for investigating commons in general.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
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