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Adult refugees with limited education are a distinctive learner group with substantial and distinctive educational, social, and psychological needs. Working with these learners is a highly specialised activity, requiring high levels of educational skill and commitment. With a paucity of original research available about this group of learners, this study provides a systematic documentation of… Read more
This paper presents the key international legal instrument relevant for education, their use and links with policy frameworks and tools being developed by the humanitarian community to address education rights of children in conflict and emergencies. It describes the current thinking around the right to education in emergencies and why education is a central right… Read more
Research for effective psychological interventions for refugee and asylum-seeking children has intensified. The need for interventions in environments more easily accessed by children and families is especially relevant for newly arrived populations. This paper reviews the literature on school and community-based interventions aimed at reducing psychological disorders in refugee and asylum-seeking children. The paper concludes… Read more
Modern day conflict presents a unique challenge to the disaster response and humanitarian community. Different to many disasters, conflict manifests itself over a protracted period, with varying levels of severity and no clear beginning or end. Increasingly children are the victims of such conflict, with their basic rights threatened. Education systems are increasingly vulnerable to… Read more
This article takes complex emergencies and the humanitarian response to them as its point of reference. It provides a critique of relief, development and the linking debate. Rather than being autonomous, relief is a developmental idea. However, development concepts have proven incapable of explaining permanent emergency. They also underestimate the extent of the North’s institutional… Read more
The purpose of this paper is to present findings from the evaluation of a pilot programme, Jesuit Commons: Higher Education at the Margins (JC:HEM), which initially provided higher education to refugees in Kakuma Camp, Kenya and Dzaleka Camp, Malawi; and to urban refugees in Amman, Jordan. The authors of this note review the progress made… Read more
Randomised trials have experienced a marked surge in endorsement and popularity in education research in the past decade. This surge reignited paradigm debates and spurred qualitative critics to accuse these experimental designs of eclipsing qualitative research. This article reviews a current iteration of this debate and examines two randomised trials that incorporate mixed methods to… Read more
The rapid adoption of mobile phone technologies in Africa is offering exciting opportunities for engaging with high-risk populations through mHealth programs, and the vast volumes of behavioral data being generated as people use their phones provide valuable data about human behavioral dynamics in these regions. Taking advantage of these opportunities requires an understanding of the… Read more
The rapid growth in mobile phone penetration and use of Short Message Service (SMS) has been seen as a potential solution to improve medical and public health practice in Africa. Several studies have shown effectiveness of SMS interventions to improve health workers’ practices, patients’ adherence to medications and availability of health facility commodities. To inform… Read more
Recognition of high rates of common mental disorders in many resource-constrained contexts has indicated the need for routine screening of patients attending public health facilities. Screening may facilitate entry into community level psychiatric services for those identified as disordered. Yet, screening instruments will need to ensure high specificity so as to minimise expenditures on treating… Read more
Maternal mental health is largely neglected in low- and middle-income countries. There is no routine screening or treatment of maternal mental disorders in primary care settings in South Africa. The Perinatal Mental Health Project (PMHP) developed an intervention to deliver mental health care to pregnant women in a collaborative, step-wise manner making use of existing… Read more