Can Resilience Explain the Type of Education Needs of Those Forgotten by EFA?

Unesco has quantified the broken promise of EFA: 58 million primary school age children and 63 million lower secondary age adolescents. Most of those excluded from education opportunities live in contexts of adversity, half... [ view full abstract ]

Unesco has quantified the broken promise of EFA: 58 million primary school age children and 63 million lower secondary age adolescents. Most of those excluded from education opportunities live in contexts of adversity, half of them in conflict affected regions. My presentation attempts to reflect not only on the availability of education services, but on the relevance of education toward the wellbeing needs of learners living in extremely difficult circumstances. To do this, it is proposed that the process of resilience can point to useful causal mechanism towards positive change. Resilience-based theory and evidence points to the process by which humans (and their communities and organizations) recover, continue to perform, and positively change in the face of adversity. This process can serve to align education services for children and youth in contexts of conflict, violence and other crises. Such services include alternative and community-based education and protection programs. Although the resilience discourse must be critically assessed, it should not disregard its useful evidence for transformations in difficult contexts. This is especially important for the definition and launching of the new education related Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in 2015.