Interview with Sarah Dryden-Peterson

Sarah Dryden-Peterson is associate professor of education at Harvard University, and director of the research initiative Refugee REACH. Her new book, Right Where We Belong: How Refugee Teachers and Students Are Changing the Future of Education, is published by Harvard University Press.

Where were you born?
Montreal, Canada, but I grew up in Toronto from the age of six.

How has this shaped you?
By the time I graduated from high school, almost half of Toronto’s population had migrated to the city from outside Canada’s current borders. I felt that I was witnessing and part of exciting new social movements, while also experiencing long-standing divisions within Canada, around language, power and colonialism. These early experiences have shaped the questions that drive my curiosity and how I approach my teaching and research.

What was your most memorable moment as an undergraduate?
I worked with the late Jonathan Mann, one of my great teachers, on a research project in Cuba looking at state responses to HIV-Aids. I wrestled with how health policy, in this case prison-like conditions for anyone who was HIV-positive, violated human rights. And I met small groups of young activists who taught me about resistance under oppressive conditions.

How did you end up teaching in Madagascar, and in South Africa just after the end of apartheid?
Two collective challenges – environmental justice and social justice – emerged as important questions for me at the end of the 1990s. On the former, another of my great teachers, Dan Perlman, led me to think about how environmental education was focused on rural communities, whereas those in cities lived in unsustainable ways, which led me to Madagascar. I taught adolescents and learned from them about ways they negotiated daily food insecurity, and the desire for economic stability and distance from political power. Another teacher, Elizabeth Smyth, encouraged me to explore my own history and connection to land, which led me to research history teaching in Canada. This sparked questions about how history teaching was changing after apartheid in South Africa. In Cape Town, I co-taught with Bertram Qobo, a visionary elementary school teacher, who helped me see the balancing act faced by teachers as they work towards more just futures while not ignoring the devastating poverty and structural inequities that shape their students’ daily lives.

You describe your work interviewing teachers and students in Uganda. How did this time affect your outlook on how refugee education can change?
As a teacher in the US, I felt I did not know enough to support my refugee students – I wanted to learn more to do better by them. In Uganda, I learned from teachers like Jacques Bwira about how they adapted constantly to support the needs of their students. Jacques arrived in Kampala in 2000, having fled his home in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and started a school for refugees with the goal to “ensure for our children a basic education to prepare them for their future lives”. This goal came with endless questions and decisions. For example, when planning this school, he needed to decide whether the education would look more like education in DRC, the country of origin for most of his students, or more like education in Uganda, where they lived then. Learning from teachers like Jacques, I came to think about ecosystems of change in refugee education – not only about global or national policy or school culture or classroom practice, but about how each of these elements tied together and influenced each other.

With up to 200 people in some refugee classrooms, do you sometimes despair about the quality of education that children can expect to receive?
I am often asked to take on the role of teacher in schools where I am doing research, when a teacher is absent or needed elsewhere. Taking this role, I feel myself exactly what teachers describe: the immense powerlessness of how to foster learning in classrooms with this many students. That desire for control when faced with chaos, to just get by without a vision for the broader goals of what you are doing, is strong. Tackling these resource-based inequalities – like huge class sizes – is vital for the future of refugee education; but acknowledging identity-based inequalities – like students not seeing themselves represented in curricula or having their learning needs met – is also important. Enrolment for refugee students is not enough.

Given the economic hardships faced by refugee children in these conflict zones, is it difficult to remain positive and optimistic about their life chances?
I struggle with this question daily. In most refugee-hosting countries, refugees do not have the right to work. So even in a best-case scenario where refugees are able to access high-quality education, they face unequal opportunity structures that limit their futures. But I am still optimistic because of the amazing teachers and young people who I’ve met. They may experience inequalities at every turn, but they are determined not to replicate this status quo – for them, it is not an option.

Is it difficult advising teachers faced with extremely challenging conditions?
I have become keenly aware of my privilege as I move among schools, across national borders. Although I’m always keen to hear from others – asking questions, listening and bringing ideas together are my most important tools as a researcher – teachers, students and parents mostly want me to talk about places they have no access to, so they too can learn from these spaces.

What keeps you awake at night?
The central question of my book does: “What would it take to ensure that all displaced young people have access to learning that enables them to feel a sense of belonging and prepares them to help build a more peaceful and equitable future?”

What do you do for fun?
I love hiking and swimming with our family, coming upon a blooming wildflower in an unlikely place, organising transnational family games virtually and in-person, trying new recipes – especially if they involve chocolate – and singing with our two daughters.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com

CV

1997 BA, social studies, Harvard University

1999 MPhil, history education, University of Cape Town

2009 EdD, Harvard Graduate School of Education

2002-03 Fulbright scholarship, Uganda

2003-07 Presidential scholarship, Harvard University

2009-12 Postdoctoral fellow, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

2011 Educating Children in Conflict Zones: Research, Policy, and Practice for Systemic Change (with Karen Mundy)

2012– associate professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Appointments

Tim Jones will be the next vice-chancellor of the University of Liverpool. Currently provost at the University of Birmingham, he will return to the institution where he took his undergraduate and doctoral degrees in January, following the retirement of Dame Janet Beer. Professor Jones, an expert in advanced electronic materials, previously held a series of pro vice-chancellor posts at the University of Warwick. Carmel Booth, president of Liverpool’s council, said he had demonstrated an “energetic and collaborative leadership style and communicated an exciting and ambitious global vision”.

Estelle Iacona has been elected president of Paris-Saclay University. She has served as interim president since the appointment of Sylvie Retailleau as minister of higher education in the French government, and was before that vice-president. Professor Iacona was formerly executive vice-president for academic and research affairs at CentraleSupélec, the graduate engineering school that is one of Paris-Saclay’s constituent institutions. She said her priority would be to “consolidate and sustain the [Paris-Saclay] model, bringing together the strengths, potential and complementary assets of universities and grandes écoles”.

Nic Smith is joining Victoria University of Wellington as vice-chancellor following Grant Guilford’s retirement. Currently provost at Queensland University of Technology, Professor Smith was previously dean of engineering at the University of Auckland, head of biomedical engineering at King’s College London and professor of computational physiology at the University of Oxford.

Nick Birbilis has been appointed executive dean of the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Built Environment at Deakin University. He is currently interim dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science at the Australian National University.

Kerry Matthews has been appointed chief student officer at the University of Surrey. She is presently director of student and education services at the University of Southampton.

Stellenbosch University has picked Herman Wasserman as the next chair of its department of journalism. He is currently professor of media studies at the University of Cape Town.