Three - Teachers’ Well-Being and Resilience in the Face of Violence: Lessons from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Niger

Summary

Introduction

Attacks on schools in contexts of armed conflict affect every dimension of education, from school governance to students’ ability to learn (GCPEA, 2022). While abundant literature is concerned with attacks against students and children, violence against teachers in contexts of violent conflict is significantly less well documented and analysed, as is also the case in ‘peaceful’ contexts (Espelage et al, 2013). Existing research suggests that violence against teachers can have devastating consequences for their well-being and motivation (Wolf et al, 2015), but more work is needed to understand the potentially far-reaching effects of violence against teachers, and how teachers navigate violent school environments.

This chapter, which builds on research carried out for the Building Resilience in Crisis through Education (BRiCE) project, seeks to answer three related research questions:

• 1. What are the causes of violence against teachers?

• 2. What are the effects of violence on teachers’ well-being, teaching, and classroom management?

How do teachers deal with violence in the school environment?

The chapter also examines how teachers’ resilience in the face of violence can be strengthened through education programmes and teacher training modules. We focus on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Niger, two countries that have experienced long-standing violence. The eastern provinces of the DRC have been affected by violent conflict for more than 30 years, with the research sites of Uvira and Fizi in South Kivu being among the most affected regions in the country. In Niger, violent conflict has had a direct impact on the region of Diffa since 2012 and has also indirectly affected the region of Zinder, on which this study focuses. Many factors fuel these crises, including persistent destitution and the weakness of state institutions, but also the effects of climate change in Niger and environmental destruction, notably deforestation, in the DRC. These intersect with the effects of violent conflict and often further weaken teachers’ and education systems’ ability to deal with ongoing crises.

This chapter starts with a description of the mixed-methods research approach deployed to study violence against teachers through a consortium between the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the Institut Superieur Pedagogique de Bukavu (ISP Bukavu).