DARE – Resilient education system for adolescent learners: inclusive community-based participatory research in urban and rural settings in Pakistan

This study will generate contextually grounded evidence on what resilient education means for adolescents (between ages 10 and 19), their teachers, education authorities and communities in Pakistan.

The study will seek to answer:

• How do adolescents, including learners with disabilities, their teachers and their communities understand and experience natural and man-made disaster related risks and their impact on learning?
• What does a resilient education system mean to them? What do they perceive as their role in risk management, adaptation and resilience building?
• How are parents and communities engaged in education system resilience building activities and how can their resilience be strengthened?
• How gender, location (urban/rural) and disability affects experiences of a risk-informed learning environment and resilience building?

This research is highly relevant to Pakistan as it faces a critical challenge around inclusion of learners’ agency, climate change and education. Pakistan has a high proportion of learners and education communities affected by climate-related annual disasters. This study focuses on adolescent learners whose participation and agency, despite being key stakeholders in education, are highly marginalised in policies related to education and climate justice.

This study offers a clear route to generating meaningful benefit for all the participating groups. It will directly empower all participants through sharing their perceptions and lived experiences. A key part of this study is to draw on work human development and authentic relating in order to engage meaningfully with them to gather rich data with integrity in a way that honours the time spent with participants. It is expected that participants will gain confidence and feel better able to advocate for themselves and others in the future using the empirical evidence generated by them and about them.

It will also directly benefit the peer researchers. By the end of the study process, it is expected that they will gain knowledge to conduct focus group discussions (FDGs), interpret data and share findings, and learn to advocate for change. Their role may positively influence how they are perceived by others in the community and especially by the education and climate change policymakers. They will have developed a wider network through building relationships with other participants and the research team.

The evidence generated can shape the policy interventions that the Data and Research in Education, Research Consortium (DARE-RC) aims to achieve. Engagement with national policymakers, climate change and education actors, including provincial and federal Ministry of Education, Ministry of Climate Change, national and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) like the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) working in education and Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.

This study will provide vital empirical evidence on experiences and perceptions on what resilient education systems mean for adolescent girls and boys, including adolescents with different types of disabilities from different urban and rural settings in Pakistan. It will also generate evidence of parents’, teachers’ and communities’ perceptions of a resilient education system.

Understanding these contextual experiences and how they are mediated through barriers and vulnerabilities related to gender, disabilities and other socio-cultural norms, and risks and hazards related to climate change can directly feed into the policy and programmes related to localised resilient education systems. The use of empirical data and insights generated through research can contribute to evidence-informed policy alignment across sectors that can help to ensure that the co-benefits and intersectoral dependencies between education, climate and environment are made explicit in the implementation of national strategies.

Climate change-related hazards and cascading adverse events, such as disasters, displacement, disruptions and conflicts, have substantially exacerbated the ongoing education crisis and social inequalities and have become a major driver of economic losses and development setbacks. The impact of these adversities is much greater for those facing social disadvantage, young people living in rural areas, low-income families and learners with disabilities.

Despite the high frequency and magnitude of climate change-related emergencies in Pakistan, the implementation of disaster management policies continues to be a challenge, and impact is often viewed in isolation from education. We need to better understand how the impacts on individuals, households, communities and education systems are contextual and interlinked. In order to climate-proof – a process that integrates climate change mitigation and adaptation measures into the infrastructure and system – the education system for all, understanding of lived experiences, perceptions, participation and agency of all learners, their teachers and their communities is imperative.

Leveraging Sightsavers’ existing partnership with schools and academic institutions, this action-oriented and inclusive community-based participatory research (CBPR) will capture rich narratives and visual data, such as geographical maps and photographs, to generate contextually grounded evidence on what resilient education means for adolescents, teachers, education authorities and communities.

• Visit the Data and Research in Education, Research Consortium (DARE-RC)