Unity Over Diversity. A Multi-cultural Education Perspective on Ethnicity, Social Cohesion and Secondary School Education in Kenya

Since the founding of the 'two faces of education in ethnic conflict' concept (Bush & Saltarelli, 2000) peace education research has critically repositioned education's role in addressing interethnic relations as a double-edged sword. What this means is that a society's interethnic relations can be improved by bringing students and teachers of diverse ethnic groups into contact with each other in school settings (Beelman & Heinemann, 2014; van Ommering, 2014). This can also be attained through direct teaching and learning about peaceful intergroup co-existence (Cole & Barsalou, 2006; Danesh, 2008). But more interethnic contacts can equally evoke negative interethnic feelings, such as hate and fear for outgroup members (Pettigrew, 1998; Thijs & Verkuyten, 2014). Such emotions mostly lead to segregation and interethnic contact avoidance (Dejaeghere & Hooghe, 2012). In this regards, education becomes complicit in promoting drivers of future violent conflicts (Bar-Tal & Rosen, 2009). Per this reasoning, ethnic groups' behaviors (ethnicity) can be both positively and negatively addressed through education. Yet the ongoing analyses on how these polar roles of education actually occur are often confined to top-level power dynamics and structural factors (Cardozo & May, 2009; Cremin, 2016). The debates consistently focus on how to socialize of students with peaceful intergroup co-existence attitudes, including reconciliation skills (Bar-Tal & Rosen, 2009).As a result, the role of the individual teacher in the reproduction or mitigation of drivers of intractable conflicts, especially intergroup stereotypes and prejudiced attitudes is often overlooked. Meanwhile it is the individual teacher who translates the abstract and value-laden curriculum contents into measurable lesson outcomes and then teaches them to students (Achinstein & Ogawa, 2006; Smith, 2005). Indeed, 'teachers may be part of the communities in conflict and therefore find it difficult to challenge the values of their own without becoming emotionally involved' (Smith, 2005, p. 382). Taken together, teachers personal and ethnic beliefs and emotions have the potential to enter into school and classroom practices in some differential ways. The current (bottom-up) research attempts to address this gap by analyzing how individual teachers reproduce or mitigate interethnic stereotypes, prejudiced attitudes and discriminations in Kenya Secondary Schools in the Nairobi County.

Publication year:2021

Accessibility:Embargoed