Education and conflict: Essay review

This review essay looks at three recent publications in the emerging field of ‘education and conflict’ and explores an apparent gap between theory and practice in the field. Recent works by educationalists Lynn Davies, ‘Education and conflict: complexity and chaos’ (2004) and Tony Gallagher, ‘Education in divided societies (2004)’ are contrasted with the World Bank's 2005 ‘Reshaping the future: education and postconflict reconstruction’, and similarities between the publications are highlighted. Davies’ work uses complexity theory to illuminate the relationships between education and conflict and to establish an argument for ‘complex-adaptive schools’, which would use conflict positively to engage students in the creation of peaceful communities. Gallagher, using a number of well-developed case studies, examines the way education systems have been structured to respond to and operate in divided societies, concluding that classroom agency and flexibility are crucial. The calls, by Davies and Gallagher, for educational re-creation are explored in contrast to the World Bank's publication, which offers best practice lessons to support post-conflict educational reconstruction. The article probes these differences and points to areas where the practitioner-directed Bank publication and the more academic works do and do not intersect, attempting to indicate areas where bridges may be built.