Teaching and teachers in conflict-affected settings during COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic, challenges around the delivery of education in conflict and crisis-affected settings have intensified due to school closures. Communities in these resource-scarce educational environments struggled to adapt alternative modes of educational delivery that would help prevent the spread of the disease. These educational settings require the most qualified, trained, well supported and motivated teachers who can work with learners who may have been traumatised by the experience of violence, forced displacement and ongoing adversities. Yet, so often there is a shortage of teachers in conflict affected contexts. Where teachers are available, they often lack the relevant and required qualifications or professional capacities and their employment may not be stable due to ongoing conflict, restrictions on or loss of their right to work and the harsh conditions under which their families live. On top of these difficulties, COVID-19 has created an ‘unprecedented global education emergency’ exacerbating the funding gap in education, disproportionately affecting the world’s poorest and vulnerable children such as refugees, internally displaced persons and compounding gender-based violence for millions of women and girls. This special issue of ECR, co-edited by Prof Tejendra Pherali (IOE) and Dr Mary Mendenhall (Teachers College, Columbia University) brings together a broad range of empirical research, rigorous reviews and theoretical/conceptual analyses that focus on teachers and teaching in conflict settings during the COVID-19 pandemic