PhD Dissertation, submitted February 2017, passed May 2017
Supervisor: Professor Madeleine Arnot
Abstract
Twenty years after the end of war, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is still a conflicted society struggling to ‘peace itself together’. An arena of ongoing tension and promise is that of formal education, in particular secondary schooling. While critiques of the country’s unwieldy structural complexity and ethnically segregated educational practices have dominated academic discourse, less attention has been given to the voices, values and practices of actors within those structures. Through a multi-sited case study I explore how policymakers, pedagogical Advisors, teacher-educators, School Directors, teachers and students in BiH understand and enact a peacebuilding role for education and for themselves while navigating the social and political complexities of BiH’s post-war ‘education ecology’. In doing so, this study aims to push forward current thinking about education’s role in post-conflict peacebuilding contexts by challenging researchers, practitioners and policymakers to (a) consider the experiential dimensions of agency-structure relations in peacebuilding contexts, (b) critically examine the effects of layered ecological influences on peacebuilding practices in education, (c) evaluate the significance of time and generational change in peacebuilding needs assessment, and (d) to adopt critical perspectives on post-conflict intervention models that may inadvertently reproduce privilege and exclusion across and within schools, and yield over the longer-term a dangerous peacebuilding skills gap, particularly in technical-vocational schools. This study thus contributes to a social psychology of peacebuilding, a sociology of education in post-conflict contexts and a sociology of peacebuilding through education.
The study adapts Bronfenbrenner's (1979) notion of social ecological systems to conceptualise BiH’s complex ‘education ecology’ comprised of layered and interacting historical, social, cultural, political, economic, and ideological influences. It probes the operation and effect of this ecology through the lenses of differentially-positioned education actors as they negotiate the construction of the country’s past, present and future as a multi-ethnic society. A multi-sited case study in three regions (Republika Srpska, Herzegovina-Neretva Canton and Sarajevo Canton) frames this exploration of how education policy actors, School Directors and teachers understand the role of education in BiH today, and whether, why and how they bring a peacebuilding dimension to the work. It compares and contrasts these perspectives with those of BiH secondary school students who, from their vantage point as the first truly post-war generation, present a different picture of the present peacebuilding challenges in BiH society and their educational needs. The study draws on a rich array of data sources including policy and document analysis, 60 semi-structured interviews (including 12 with education policymakers, 11 with teacher educators, 15 with educational NGOs, and 22 with secondary School Directors and teachers), and focus group discussions with 60 ethnically diverse secondary school students aged 16-18 years using a specially-designed card sort stimulus activity. Qualitative analysis and participant validation bring focus to salient issues where historical, structural, cultural, social, and psychosocial dimensions of Bosnia’s ‘education ecology’ intersect, and shed light on new opportunities for enhancing the peacebuilding efficacy of educational actors in this context.
Five empirical chapters probe the layers of BiH’s education ecology, revealing nuances in the experiential dimensions of agency-structure relations and observing where encouraging developments have emerged over the 20 past years in spite of persistent ethno-nationally differentiated educational structures. Interviews reveal contrasting peacebuilding logics which produce varied effects at the level of educational practice. When contrasted with the experiences and understandings of students, intergenerational tensions become evident, as do the unintended negative effects of certain peacebuilding Theories of Change. Illustrated throughout are characteristics of the education ecology that support and constrain educators’ and students’ (critical) peacebuilding agency.
On the basis of the research findings, I argue that the BiH education sector does not evidence binary pro- and anti-peacebuilding stances as some of the literature suggests. It evidences, rather, a range of interpretations of what peacebuilding in contemporary BiH means and entails. These different interpretations yield a variety of direct and indirect approaches to overcoming social division which become operationalised to varied effect at the level of schools and classrooms. Significant factors not only include school location and type, but also the role of educational leadership and the values that heads of Education Ministries, Pedagogical Institutes and schools bring to the mission and ethos of school institutions. Life histories and personal relationships are also seen to affect professional roles and relations across the education ecology, both in favour of and against peacebuilding. The study confirms that BiH’s 1990s war is still little addressed in secondary school and offers a discursive analysis of the apparent complacency with this educational ‘culture of silence’. At the same time, some teachers are seen to be investing a great deal of hope in students to transform BiH society, and demonstrate critical and courageous peacebuilding engagement. The shift in schools to post-war generations raises questions about policymakers’ and teachers’ educational assumptions, while students themselves demand a rethinking of education’s peacebuilding role. Independent schools are seen to be undertaking more radical forms of peacebuilding which offer alternative models of education for the state schools to consider.
This study contributes methodological, pedagogical and programming insights to peacebuilding research and practice in the education field. Conceptually, it introduces new notions of ‘exclusionary peacebuilding’, ‘adultism’, and the possibility of reconceptualising youth ‘apathy’ as an alternative form of youth political morality, with ‘desistance’ being one expression of critical agency.