This project brings together teacher trainees from the University of Nottingham’s School of Education and students from Kigali Institute of Education in Rwanda.
The aim of the project is to develop teachers who can employ a range of pedagogies to promote community cohesion in both formal and non-formal educational settings. The work will also enhance peace and citizenship education in both partner countries and in particular explore issues concerning genocide education.
Supported by their tutors and lecturers, the project participants will develop pedagogies for teaching for community cohesion in history lessons, other subject and whole school areas. The project also works with partner institutions such as the Kigali Memorial Centre in Rwanda and the National Holocaust Centre Beth Shalom in the UK.
This project has evolved out of informal collaboration and contact developed since an initial visit by academic staff of the UNESCO Centre for Comparative Education Research, School of Education, University of Nottingham in February 2006.
Students from the School of Education and History teacher trainees from Kigali Institute of Education will be working together in 2008-2009 by exchanging information about ways to develop appropriate pedagogies for teaching about sensitive issues such as the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide of 1994. The project will use information and communication technologies to link students and university staff via video conferencing, blogging, chatroom and Moodle facilities.
Unity and reconciliation are part of ongoing nation building through various government and non-governmental organisations’ work. This project contributes to this process in the areas of formal and non-formal education by developing pedagogies for teaching about community cohesion and its negative counterparts. The project also connects to other Peace Education projects being undertaken by the UNESCO Centre for Comparative Education Research.
The project will run for 3 years. It is envisaged that from September 2009 onwards, a wider variety of teacher trainees (from Geography, Modern Foreign Languages, English, Science and Mathematics teacher training courses at the School of Education and at Kigali Institute of Education) will be included in the project.
The project is vital as a means to develop cross-cultural initial and continuous teacher professional development processes.
Project Activities Year One
September 2008 - December 2008
Project activities started in September 2008. Through a Moodle password protected website History teacher trainees from Kigali Institute of Education in Rwanda and from the University of Nottingham’s School of Education have been able to collaborate. Throughout the academic year, students have been able to exchange information and experiences about teaching sensitive issues such as the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide. This was done through a range of activities which were aimed at allowing students to explore the topics concerning genocide education from a personal-professional development perspective.
The 1st set of activities conducted in September 2008 consisted of sharing information about themselves and their motivations for becoming a teacher. Additionally, students were asked to explain why they thought school pupils should learn about genocide and what they understood by ‘community cohesion.’
Additionally, some KIE students were able to do their community service at Kigali Memorial Centre. For a short community service report, click here.
January 2009 - April 2009
Activity 2 was conducted in March and April 2009. In groups, students participating in the project were asked to introduce their country, their education system and traditions of history teaching to their peers locally and at the partner institution. All students were asked to consider how the history curriculum impacts on the teaching of sensitive issues such as genocide and how it relates to community cohesion. Students were then asked to react to each other’s comments.
April - June 2009
From April to June 2009, Activities 3, 4 and 5 focused on developing pedagogies for teaching about genocide. Taking a lesson taught by one of the UK students participating in the project as a starting point, all students used the Moodle forum as a means to discuss how they can teach to young people about genocide and how they can promote community cohesion through such teaching. The forum associated with these activities provoked a wide range of deep and thoughtful discussion about approaches to genocide education in different classroom settings. One of the key discussion points that came out of these fora was the question on whether to focus on the victims, the perpetrators or both. This raised crucial (and difficult and highly sensitive) discussions on how through the teaching about genocide it can make a genuine contribution to preventing a repetition of genocide. This is particularly salient in Rwanda where divisive and genocidal ideologies were ingrained in the population for more than 80 years during colonial rule and during the post-colonial period up to 1994.
June 2009
The 1st project year was summed up with another visit by University of Nottingham staff to Kigali Institute of Education. During this visit, the project team of academics reviewed activities to date and started to plan activities with a wider cohort of students in Rwanda and the UK. Equally importantly, the 1st project conference was held. The conference was the 1st conference to address explicitly genocide education in schools in Rwanda. It brought together experts in the field, educators, students and officials and explored genocide education from a wide range of angles. For summaries of presentations please click here. ((add link to pdf file here))
Project Activities Year 2
August 2009
The project, its aims and objectives and related activities were introduced to the students by Jean Leonard Buhigiro. The 2nd year of project activities was started off with the Rwandan students sharing information about themselves and their reasons for wanting to be teachers via the password protected Moodle website.
September 2009
The project team updated the website adding resources that have come out of the 1st Education for Community Cohesion conference held in July 2009 in Kigali.