Decolonizing education in Bourj Albarajenah: cosmologies of a Palestinian refugee camp

Abstract

ABSTRACT Palestinian refugee camps have long been challenging the coloniality over their land, but also of a humanitarian government that provides standardized educational services without responding to the unique educational needs of the community. So how can Palestinian refugees decolonize their own educational process to provide their children with education that meets their needs, acknowledges their story, and responds to their unique livelihood as a displaced community? Through autoethnographic recordings and in-depth interviews conducted in Bourj Albarajenah refugee camp, I find that these complex entanglements between memory, dreams, social reality, and community, developed throughout life at camp guide the child’s learning process. Refugee children learn by listening, seeing, living, doing, and being in a space of meanings, governed by conviviality. These camp cosmologies form place-based pedagogy that responds to the unique worlds of children, and therefore, should be recognized as a component for a more inclusive education in displaced communities.