Learning from the Courageous Actions of War and Post-War Time Teachers: A Bricolage of Bosnian Educators

The purpose of this study was to identify the preconditions that inspire courageous action through exploration of the choices made by four classroom teachers in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Each educator had made the decision not only to teach during or after the 1992–1995 war and genocide in their country, but to do so in ways that went against official post-war teaching guidelines. Although there are a vast number of studies on courage in literature, there is little research that includes teachers who remained in their classrooms during wartime or chose to enter their classrooms in transitional societies after their communities experienced a war and genocide. Bricolage researchers investigate topics in exploratory ways beyond the standard and accepted sensemaking tactics to reveal unique outcomes that may have previously existed but have not yet had light shed upon them. As the bricoleur, I threaded three divergent topics: courage, a violent history, and sharing of personal narratives through the five senses. The teachers shared a range of artifacts with me, which created the foundation of this study. These three topics, although vastly different from one another, when merged provided insight into the pre-conditions needed to encourage courageous action. Stories, artifact photos or other materials are included within the dissertation as well as a digital archive I created. The archive includes the anecdotes, artifacts and historical context as a supplemental element to support the study and serve as a window to the wartime and post-war teacher experiences. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA (https://aura.antioch.edu/) and OhioLINK ETD Center (https://etd.ohiolink.edu)