̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Colleen McLaughlin

Syrian higher education system facing 'complete breakdown' after eight years of war – study

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 09:07:36 +0000

̽��ֱ��findings, which draw on interviews conducted remotely through secure apps with academics and students still active in Syria, paint a devastating picture of the impact of the war on all aspects of university life. Consequences range from the destruction of facilities and terrorising presence of security forces on campus to the forced displacement of students and faculty members and near disappearance of research.

Syrian Higher Education post-2011: Immediate and Future Challenges, published today, was commissioned by the Council for At-Risk Academics (Cara), a British charity that helps academics in danger or forced exile, and authored by Professor Colleen McLaughlin with Jo-Anne Dillabough, Olena Fimyar, Zeina Al-Azmeh and Mona Jebril of the Faculty of Education at Cambridge.

A second complementary study out today, ̽��ֱ��State of Higher Education in Syria pre-2011, also led by Professor McLaughlin and commissioned jointly by Cara and the British Council, provides an overview of the sector before the outbreak of war.

̽��ֱ��conflict in Syria has generated the 21st century’s worst humanitarian crisis, with as many as 300,000 Syrians killed and half the population displaced since it began in 2011. Previously, Syria boasted one of the Middle East’s largest and most well-established higher education systems. Not only has the war decimated the university system within the country, but the refugees who have fled are estimated to include 2,000 university professionals and at least 100,000 university-qualified students.

̽��ֱ��new report identifies three clear and damaging trends in the Syrian higher education system, many elements of which existed prior to 2011 but all exacerbated by the conflict. Most fundamental is the heightened politicisation of the sector through a variety of means, many involving violence. 'These include corrupt governance structures, the militarisation of students and university practices, and a much stronger security apparatus leading to the fragmentation and/or complete breakdown of HE,' the study says.

Human rights violations including detention, patronage, disappearances, displacement and murder are changing the demographic make-up of higher education, it adds, and have led to the social distrust of HE institutions as capable of educating students into the future and the targeting of academics as a particular threat.

One academic interviewed for the study said: “In 2012 I heard from my colleagues in our laboratory that there were soldiers who came to our university, broke down the doors, destroyed everything and hit everybody there because they had protested against the regime". Another recalled: “One of the professors was dragged away by two security officials in front of the students. That professor was taken to prison and charged because of his political views.”

̽��ֱ��general atmosphere within universities was of pervasive fear, in which ‘anyone working at the university is stopped from communicating with anyone outside,’ a third interviewee reported.

Meanwhile, political realignment has become a major obstacle to broad forms of internationalisation and collaboration – the lifeblood of higher education. Regime-controlled universities have had to curtail their links with Western universities, the researchers found, while reinforcing collaboration with countries supportive of the regime, including Russia, Iran and China.

A second trend identified by researchers was the academic impact of the civil war, including curriculum stagnation and the disappearance of research. “ ̽��ֱ��conflict has resulted in massive losses of both HE expertise and HE infrastructure,” says the study, with already-limited university funding diverted towards the conflict and public spending on higher education per head well below the OECD average.

Government control over the content and delivery of curricula has increased in areas controlled by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and there is more dependence on rote learning and outdated textbooks. Teaching quality has fallen as experienced qualified staff are lost and replaced by untrained recent graduates, and reports of bribery, cheating and false certification are rife, with corruption “threatening the integrity of HE”.

Research, already limited pre-2011, has “all but disappeared”, driven out by lack of funding and the near-impossibility of field research, the study says.

̽��ֱ��third and final trend highlighted in the report is the impact of the conflict on students’ experiences. While access has increased as admission requirements have been lowered to counter lower applications post-2011, attrition rates have “soared” because of personal safety fears, poverty, fear of detention and internal displacement. Education quality has diminished as funding falls, with staff often unavailable and buildings unusable, coupled with disruption to water and power.

In a series of recommendations, the report calls for action from the United Nations, NGOs and the broader international community to depoliticise Syrian higher education and develop and implement “high standards of academic freedom and associated forms of accountability”. While it is important that university students and staff should be kept safe, national security personnel should be withdrawn from campuses and replaced with civilian security personnel trained in conflict reduction and peace-building approaches, the study says.

International partnerships with other Middle Eastern, Western and European universities should be developed. “Standards of transparency, autonomy, freedom and cultural and political pluralism … will be crucial to any post-conflict Syrian HE sector,” researchers conclude.

̽��ֱ��report’s findings were drawn from existing academic research and “grey” literature such as news and NGO reports, together with 117 remote interviews with university staff and students still in Syria conducted by compatriot academics in exile, focus group discussions and personal testimonies from 19 Syrian academics living in exile in Turkey.

Professor McLaughlin said: “ ̽��ֱ��key researchers here were the Syrian displaced academics CARA was working with. This collaborative research project was challenging to undertake given the context. ̽��ֱ��results are important, and so is this way of collaborating. CARA’s work to support Syrian displaced academics is vital and we need to remember and honour their work as well as continue to support research into the reality of Syrian higher education.”

Stephen Wordsworth, Executive Director of Cara, said: “Cara’s regionally-based Syria Programme provides opportunities for Syrian academics in exile to work collaboratively with their counterparts in UK universities and elsewhere, to maintain and develop their skills and experience in preparation for the day when they can return home to help re-build the system of higher education in that country.

“A separate Syria Programme Report examined the state of higher education in Syria before 2011; today’s new study shows very clearly the damage that has been inflicted since then, and what needs to be done to start to put things right again. We are immensely grateful to all the Syrian academics who contributed, and to Colleen and her team for their inspirational leadership of the project.”

̽��ֱ��conflict in Syria has left the country’s higher education system “fragmented and broken”, with universities suffering politicisation, militarisation and human rights violations including disappearances and murder, according to researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Syrian academics in exile.

One of the professors was dragged away by two security officials in front of the students. That professor was taken to prison and charged because of his political views

Syrian academic

Freedom House on Flickr

Syria

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Bereaved children missing out on vital support in UK schools, study finds

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 08:46:20 +0000

A lack of clarity on government and school policies on mental health and bereavement has led to “confusion and disagreement” on the forms of support schools should offer, says the study, which was conducted for the child bereavement charity Winston’s Wish.

Researchers led by Professor Colleen McLaughlin found a “random approach” among schools, with students reporting receiving “only little or no help at all” following the death of a parent or sibling, and academic pressures monopolising the resources available.

Teachers feel ill-equipped

Although schools recognise bereavement as a high priority, teachers say they feel ill-equipped to offer support to bereaved children, even avoiding intervention through fear of doing more harm than good.

Consequences of parental loss can include mental and physical health problems, as well as lower educational attainment. Yet evidence suggests in many cases this can be mitigated by well-managed school support, at a time when a child’s family, also coping with grief, may not be able to provide the consistent support needed.

One parent dies in the UK every 22 minutes. These parents leave behind around 41,000 dependent children a year, which is more than 100 newly bereaved children each day.

̽��ֱ��new study, Consequences of childhood bereavement in the context of the British school system, brings together a wealth of research about children who have lost a mother, father or sibling before the age of 18, with a specific focus on support from school.

“Profound effects” of loss

̽��ֱ��effects of losing a loved one are profound for children, the researchers found, with consequences for mental and physical health but also social and educational impacts, including an increased risk of under-achieving or even dropping out of school.

Psychological reactions include fear, helplessness, anxiety, anger, lower self- esteem and insomnia. While these are normal responses to the profound distress caused by the death of a parent or sibling, the support available to children immediately after a death appears to have a strong impact on their mental health longer term, research shows.

Bereavement can also make children particularly vulnerable socially, the study shows, with those from disadvantaged homes not only at increased risk of losing a loved one but already facing tougher social challenges. Having someone to talk to is vital for children and adolescents following a loss, yet one fifth of bereaved participants studied reported not having talked to anyone – a trend that correlated with an increased risk of being bullied, participating in bullying or assaults.

Schools well-placed to support

Strong social networks are key in reducing the negative effects of child bereavement, researchers found, and UK and international experts agree that schools are particularly well-suited to offer support. “Schools often already understand the needs of the individual student and are one of the arenas where children spend most of their waking hours,” says the study.

Exploring how the current British school system deals with bereavement, researchers found a lack of clarity on governmental and school policies on mental health and bereavement, leading to “both confusion and disagreement on the forms of support schools should offer and the extent of that support”. This had led to a “somewhat random approach”.

While a small number of schools have a “planned, managed and holistic response to bereavement”, most do not, and staff “often feel isolated when facing issues related to emotional wellbeing”.

Academic pressures

̽��ֱ��“highly pressured” climate in English schools, with a focus on academic outcomes eating up time and resources, made it harder to give time and attention to vulnerable pupils, researchers found. Yet the opportunity to “share difficult thoughts” with someone helped build children’s resilience, directly reducing the difficulties they would experience and the potential for high-risk behaviour.

Professor McLaughlin said: “Our review of research reinforces that grief itself is not an illness. ̽��ֱ��path that a child takes after the death of a parent or sibling is dependent on the context and multiple aspects. Some pathways make young people very vulnerable, while others do not. Support in the environment is vital, and schools are key in this.

“Young people want schools to acknowledge the bereavement but also to provide a safe space to continue as normally as possible or to have special attention – depending on the child. Teachers want to help badly but space to discuss how to respond and to form a process is being pushed out. They too are asking for help.

“There is a need for a holistic integrated response from schools, and it’s very important that young people are listened to as part of that process.”

Memories of bereavement

Faculty of Education researchers have also gathered the experiences of adults who lost parents and siblings as children. Their moving account, published today in a separate report, Voices of adults bereaved as children, reinforces the message that meaningful support is important in the aftermath of bereavement and that schools are key in providing it.

On interviewee recalled: “I just heard my father, sort of, scream in a really animal sort of way. It was a sound that I’d never heard before and even now I feel the sound physically in my body and that’s what it was like for me as a child. ... It was just like being stabbed all over my body. I just felt this, sort of, physical pain and I kind of knew, although I didn’t know, I knew from this awful sound that I heard that my mother had died.”

Another said: “I think if I just dealt with it, sooner in a way, especially when I was younger... if I’d have spoken about it ...and in secondary school, I mean I got through it, but when I think back it was a horrible time.”

Winston’s Wish is calling on all schools in the UK to develop a bereavement plan. ̽��ֱ��charity also urges the schools inspectorate Ofsted to ensure that the revised Inspection Framework takes account of the impact of bereavement on children and young people’s lives, and proposes that all trainee teachers receive core bereavement training.

It has developed a free downloadable guide to supporting bereaved children. It offers guidance on creating a bereavement policy and a procedure for when there is a death in the school community. ̽��ֱ��charity’s freephone national helpline is also available for teachers to discuss and seek advice and guidance about specific cases.

̽��ֱ��free guide for schools and the schools strategy document can be downloaded at www.winstonswish.org/schools

Support for bereaved children in schools is patchy and inadequate, and teachers feel they lack the skills to help, according to a report from the Faculty of Education.

Teachers want to help badly but space to discuss how to respond and to form a process is being pushed out

Colleen McLaughlin

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Breaking sex education taboos in Africa to tackle AIDS

lw355 — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 13:59:40 +0000

In the absence of a cure or vaccine for HIV/AIDS, educating children about safe sex is regarded by many as the primary means for prevention – the United Nations and others have described it as “the social vaccine” – but the question of how best to do this has long been debated.

̽��ֱ��need for such efforts remains acute but is fraught with difficulty as deep-rooted socio-cultural, religious and moral constraints remain barriers to effective sex education across Africa and beyond.

Over a two-year period, a team of researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Centre for Commonwealth Education, along with others in the UK and three countries in Africa, approached the problem by thinking beyond the classroom and asking a fundamental question: how much do children know already?

“We worked with children at grade 6 in primary school [median age 12] because this is the final year of compulsory education in the countries we were working in, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa, and also because of a common perception that primary age is too young – that educating this age group is a risk rather than a protective factor,” said Dr Colleen McLaughlin, who leads the ASKAIDS project.

“Perhaps one of the more surprising findings was that their sexual knowledge was already wide-ranging.”

̽��ֱ��researchers used a technique called ‘photo-voice’, providing children with cameras to make a record of the people, places and things from which they learned about sex, love, AIDS and relationships – the resulting images are powerful and revealing (https://youtu.be/-837AuKdZwE).

“ ̽��ֱ��young people have a vigilant awareness of a highly sexual world around them, including prostitution, pornography and drug-related sex, and a fairly sophisticated knowledge of adults’ sexual practices,” said McLaughlin. “So much so, that it’s clear that children are at risk if treated as innocents in HIV/AIDS education.”

Asked to give their perceptions of current AIDS education classes and how they desired these classes to be, the children described how the curriculum centred on the giving of factual information – facts that they found difficult to connect to the confusing and mysterious world around them. Moreover, they felt that they couldn’t share their own knowledge with adults.

As one South African schoolboy from grade 6 put it: “ ̽��ֱ��teachers are careful with us because they think we are still young… They think we are going to be naughty or sometimes experiment what they told us... [but] who wants to experiment with AIDS?”

“When the teachers, parents and members of the community were presented with the findings, they were surprised and concerned at the extent of the young people’s knowledge,” explained researcher Dr Susan Kiragu.

“They thanked us for coming because it gave them a kind of ‘permission’ to talk about this sensitive, almost taboo, area, without feeling they were corrupting the children.”

̽��ֱ��project created what the researchers call a dialogic space; an opportunity for the children to ask questions based on what they already know, and for the teachers and the parents to respond openly and honestly.

“ ̽��ֱ��format we devised for the dialogues was engaging, interactive and rooted in the reality of the children’s experience – what is in fact simply a model of good sex education,” explained McLaughlin. “Because we want this to be a sustainable programme that will continue long after the duration of the project, we packaged the findings as a toolkit to support teachers through the process.”

In addition to in-depth interviews and focus-groups, conducted with children and adults separately, the researchers invited children to create their own mini-documentaries – involving group work and role-playing – to make up part of the toolkit. For example, in Kenya, the pupils portrayed moral stories about HIV/AIDS, such as pupils sneaking out of class to have sex, or a mother trying to influence her daughter to stop schooling and join her in prostitution.

“These role plays enabled pupils to voice their views, no matter how sensitive or incriminatory, in a de-personalised way,” said McLaughlin. “Overall, we found that children want a more interactive sexual education that allows them to engage with their own knowledge – and talk openly about their lack of knowledge.”

“They are concerned that the information they get is unrealistic and all too aware that it doesn’t reflect the world in which they live."

̽��ֱ��toolkit and a process for curriculum development is now being trialled in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Swaziland and Tanzania. As the researchers gather the results of the trial over the next few months, the hope is that their innovative programme has offered the means to deliver the “social vaccine” by transcending cultural barriers to learning.

̽��ֱ��Centre for Commonwealth Education, Faculty of Education, is funded by the Commonwealth Education Trust.

Old Enough to Know: Consulting children about sex and AIDS education in three African countries, by Colleen McLaughlin, Sharlene Swartz, Susan Kiragu, Mussa Mohamed and Shelina Walli, is published by HSRC Press: Cape Town, South Africa.

New research focusing on educating young people about sex and HIV/AIDS in Africa is using innovative techniques – such as ‘photo-voice’ and role-play – to discover what African children know about sex and where they learn it from.

It’s clear that children are at risk if treated as innocents in HIV/AIDS education.

Dr Colleen McLaughlin

ASKAIDS Project

Centre for Commonwealth Education at the Faculty of Education

Photo-voice image from the AskAIDS project

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