Harmony or chaos? Beliefs and practices about conflicts among naturalized refugee children in Tanzania

Laurent Gabriel Ndijuye

doi:10.1186/s40723-019-0067-4

Laurent Gabriel Ndijuye

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s40723-019-0067-4

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Abstract

The current study explored beliefs and practices on the main types and common causes of conflicts among naturalized refugee pre-primary children in rural Tanzania. A region with highest number of naturalized refugees in Tanzania was purposively selected. A total of 12 children were involved in the focus group discussion; nine classroom teachers, and three school principals from three pre-primary schools were individually interviewed. To gain insights on home contexts, six parents who had children in pre-primary classes were visited at their homes and interviewed on individual sessions. A number of policy and practical documents were critically analyzed. Findings revealed that the main types of conflicts among naturalized refugee children were teacher-induced and pupil-induced. Further, it was found that the main causes of conflicts among children of this group were related to scarcity of resources and social issues. These findings highlight that in order to ensure that naturalized refugee children are developing to their fullest potentials and integrated into a host Tanzanian society, deliberate efforts are much needed to understand common types and main causes of conflicts. This will help in devising appropriate strategies to develop children’s constructive conflict-resolution skills.

Highlights

Pre-primary education has increasingly become a central concern of many developing countries, among those countries that have made rapid progress in universalizing primary education (Black et al 2016; UNESCO 2007)
Main types of conflicts among naturalized refugee pre‐primary children The study intended to find out the main types of conflicts which were dominant among naturalized refugee pre-primary children
Under the sub-theme of teacher-induced conflicts, the findings revealed that the main type of conflict that occurs in pre-primary schools were as follows: 14 (40%) statements of the teachers revealed that they experienced pupil–pupil conflicts in their respective classrooms which involved one pupil against the other

Summary

Introduction

Pre-primary education has increasingly become a central concern of many developing countries, among those countries that have made rapid progress in universalizing primary education (Black et al 2016; UNESCO 2007). Majority of the countries in the world, and Tanzania in particular, are grappling with the questions of how to provide skills and knowledge to enable children access and smoothly excel during primary education (Mtahabwa 2010) Such skills include cognitive, social, conflict resolution and other related skills (Ndijuye 2013; UNESCO 2000). Though children’s conflicts are common and normal part of their everyday school life (Bonache et al 2016; Tyler 1998), too much of them could be problematic and may impede their ability to develop social skills (Johnson and Johnson 2000). Indices collected by Aurora (1994, 1999) show that 8% to 50% of pupils in different school populations experience bullying

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