黑料不打烊

There are currently 82.2 million internally displaced people (IDP) globally. Nigeria has about 3.5 million IDP, one of the highest in Africa (; ). A large percentage of the displaced are children, who may not have access to educational opportunities. Their teachers, often displaced themselves, play pivotal roles in enabling access to, and supporting, learning (). Teachers in contexts of forced displacement are often presented as ‘voiceless’ and ‘powerless’, lacking agency. Therefore, growing teachers’ agency by providing extensive support in terms of access to teacher professional development (TPD) is vital to displaced children accessing equitable education ().

No research on us, without us

In this blog post I report on the photovoice method, an innovative methodological approach I used with a group of teachers (n=10) in the Gurku interfaith IDP camp in northern Nigeria which hosts more than 2,000 people. My aim was to understand their teaching experiences and ways of working, alongside their needs around TPD. This study is situated within a participatory action research framework.

‘Too often, well-intentioned educational interventions fall short because the people they are designed for are left out of the very process meant to support them.’

Most TPD in marginalised and conflict settings are top-to-bottom initiatives unrepresentative of teachers’ voices (). Too often, well-intentioned educational interventions fall short because the people they are designed for are left out of the very process meant to support them . The principle of ‘no research on us, without us’ should not be an afterthought: it should be the starting point. No matter how impressive a policy or programme appears on paper, it is not sustainable unless it is built with the insight, experience and ownership of those at its centre ).

Photovoice with teachers

, a community-based participatory action research method, was developed in the 1990s by working on women’s health in China. Photovoice makes use of pictures with accompanying explanatory stories to examine lived experience in marginalised communities (Kessi et al., 2019).

The teachers participated in photovoice training. Following this, they took pictures that visually captured their experiences of living and teaching in the camp. In a workshop/focus group discussion that followed over several hours, they used those pictures to offer their accounts and share their stories using the (figure 1). Teachers drew emergent themes and discussed possible solutions to address identified challenges. While sharing their stories and photos, one recurring key theme was trauma, highlighting that children and parents in the camp have psychosocial needs and stressing that, as teachers, they did not feel adequately trained on this topic:

In this IDP we have a lot of trauma, affected children, even the parents … (Teacher 1)

Other research shows that teachers working with displaced populations generally lack specialised training and support (Mendenhall et al., 2018). Issues discussed by teachers in relation to their photos also included poverty, parents’ attitude to education and lack of TPD. As part of their discussion on solutions, the teachers focused on the key challenge of trauma. Teachers pointed to the need for training on socioemotional learning (SEL).

Figure 1: Teacher working together in a focus group about photovoice method

Photovoice for needs assessment

Photovoice method was useful because it highlighted teachers need for training on SEL. I drew on the photovoice outcomes to create a short introductory course on socioemotional learning for teachers in a displacement context, hosted on the platform. The training course, which ran for four weeks, was easily accessible on teachers’ mobile phones. Teachers also wanted opportunities to share their stories and tell others of their experience teaching in the camp; hence we collectively organised a gallery exhibition to showcase their pictures and stories (Figure 2).

 Figure 2: Gallery exhibition at the camp

We held a gallery exhibition of the teachers’ pictures at the community hall, where stakeholders – parents, students, camp officials, donors, local non-governmental organisations and government officials – were in attendance with teachers’ centre stage as tour guides for the exhibition. We had group brainstorming session on the questions: What can we see? What can we do?

Visitors were encouraged to leave reflections on a wall of response, reflecting messages of action. These itemised actions were addressed to each stakeholder in attendance.

Figure 3: Stakeholder group writing their reflections

Figure 4: Wall of response

Interventions fail when they are designed about people rather than with them. The question, then, is not whether researchers and policymakers can design better interventions, but whether we are willing to design them with the people whose lives they will shape. Anything less is not impact, but rather an imposition.