Inclusive education, in most countries affected by an emergency or crisis, is focused on providing access to quality education for all children. Provision of quality education for all children, as discussed in much literature about education, is very much dependent on teacher quality. Improving and sustaining the quality of teaching is equally determined by the type of training and professional development offered to teachers. Teachers, however, in emergency contexts such as in the Northeast of Nigeria, may be recruited to improve student learning, having received little or no relevant training. Therefore, professional learning for teachers that is intended to offer them opportunities for immediate and sustained improvement in practice is, this chapter argues, needed in such emergency contexts. This chapter therefore analyses teacher professional development that can improve the standard of education for all children and then assesses the effect of this development in practice in the Northeast of Nigeria.
TopDisplacement And Inclusion
Inclusion or inclusive education is a global matter of interest, attracting extensive research across the world (Dyson et al., 2002). Despite this, inclusive education is understood in different ways, with different levels of emphasis given by different scholars and stakeholders. For example, World Education Forum (2000) sees inclusive education, especially in the Global South, as provision of ‘Education for All’, including displaced persons. This author also chooses to focus on the ‘Education for All’ agenda, which aims at increasing access to and participation in education by all children, including refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) at all stages of displacement. Of course, there is a distinction between forced displacement, forced migration and voluntary migration. However, these terms are fluid and their fluidity is recognized in much literature. They are loosely used labels, describing many compelling, political or economic reasons for fleeing from one’s habitual residence. This chapter reports on migration or displacement due to life-threatening situations or coercion rather than focusing on the debate about terminology.
Displacement in the context of this chapter is the situation in which people are forced to leave or flee their homes due to conflict, violence and human rights violations (The Global Program on Forced Displacement [GPFD], 2015). People can also be forced to seek refuge in a different place within their country and in other countries as a result of natural disaster and large-scale development projects. This author focuses mainly on conflict-induced displacement as this is generally identified as a key concern for the global education community. The author also provides a definition of refugees and IDPs adopted to describe the populations that are the focus of this chapter. In this context, a refugee is:
A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it. (Article 1 of the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees as amended by the 1967 Protocol cited in Shacknove, 1985: 275)
The number of refugees recorded in 2017 across the world was 25.4 million (UNHCR, 2018). Of course, many of the issues presented in this chapter that affect refugees will have as much, or far more, impact on IDPs. A working definition of IDPs is provided by the UN, which suggests that IDPs are: