Identity, Social Mobility, and Trauma: Post-Conflict Educational Realities for Survivors of the Rohingya Genocide

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper reports a qualitative research study, which investigated the educational realities of Rohingya refugees through open ended and semi-structured in-depth interviews of four aid workers and four educators in a refugee camp in Bangladesh. It focuses on educational programming in order to understand educational opportunities for social mobility, identity preservation, and the availability of religious instruction. The findings reveal several educational difficulties and challenges for the students in relation to these themes and the paper suggests further research and educational implications in order to improve Islamic education in the camps.

This is a well-written and original paper of a very important topic, which I expect to be of much interest to academic researchers and practitioners, especially those working in human rights, humanitarian, intercultural, and religious education. The introduction is concise yet informative: it describes the context of the study, states the object of study with clear research objectives and related research questions, and introduces the methodology. The historical context of the Burmese conflict with the Rohingya is extensively described, yet very little is said about Islam and Islamic education in the context of the study, which is important in the context of this journal. The qualitative research methodology of critical ethnography is explicated with methodological research literature in relation to the purpose the study. The findings are presented in accordance with the research questions.

I recommend brief clarifications of the following aspects: (1) your theoretical perspective/conceptual framework, (2) Islamic Education in relation to the theoretical framework 3) the selection of research participants (how and why), and (4) the relationship between data and researchers’ interpretation of it, as the illustrations from the interview data are presented alongside literature and the fieldnotes have merged into the analysis. Teachers’ and aid workers’ perspective could be highlighted in the title and/or in the key words.

1) Clarification of explicit theoretical framework or perspective would link the object of study to its key concepts and justify the chosen methodology, and further help to interpret the results in relation to the key concepts of identity, social mobility, trauma, educational reality, Islamic education, as seen by previous related research. These concepts have not been defined: the theoretical underpinnings and conceptual assumptions are currently unspecified in the light of disciplinary research literature. It is thus unclear, what the impact of this study on its disciplinary context and its relevance beyond its specific educational context and the specific educational context-related research objective “to contribute towards academic research and literature that serve to improve educational programming for Rohingya youth in the camp” (p. 2, lines 54-55).

2) Conceptual and theoretical perspective on religious education and the clarification of the difference between “religious (Islamic) education and instruction” (p. 2, line 61) in the 3. research question could be provided.

3) The research participants could be introduced in the methodology section, which describes the two-phased research process and recruitment of participants (p. 6, lines 228-242) rather than in the findings and discussion (p. 7, lines 280-320).  Why eight participants? How were they selected?

4) Some clarification of the relationship between the data and the researchers’ interpretation would be beneficial for the presentation of the findings, in terms of credibility and trustworthiness of the analysis, especially when limited opportunities to check the interpretation of the data are presented to the reader through selected quotations:

• What themes did emerge and what categories did you inductively derive from the data? How is this evident in the presentation of the findings? (see p. 6, line 276). Specify or highlight these in the analysis.
• What is the relationship between the field notes (researcher’s observation) and interviews in the presentation of the findings? How do you ensure “the perspectives of the participants” (p. 6, line 251), “understanding of participants’ experiences relating to educational programming, religious and cultural preservation, and challenges faced by educators in the refugee camps” (p. 7, lines 272—274)? Openness of the open-ended interview questions could also be evaluated by the researchers themselves.

Author Response

Point 1: I added a paragraph and renamed the methods section to 'theoretical and methodological frameworks'. In this section I discuss critical theory as the theoretical grounding for my analysis, which lends well to the methodological framework and is generally a theoretical grounding for understanding the experiences of oppressed groups in society.

Point 2: I removed the term 'instruction' as the emphasis of the article is really focused on the theme of 'Islamic education' in a general sense and not so much on instruction per se. 

Point 3: I rearranged the paper and moved the detailed discussion of the participants from the findings section to the methodology section. I had to do some general edits to both sections to make the discussion more coherent. I also mentioned that 8 participants were selected because of feasibility and time constraints because of curfews imposed in the camps. I also mentioned that the participants were solicited through purposeful sampling.

Point 4: For this point, I did describe the emergent themes but it was a little harder to identify them because of lengthy discussion of participants in the 'findings sections'. Once I trimmed down the introductory paragraph of the 'findings' section and did a bit tidying up it's clearer what themes emerged from the interview analysis. 

I also clarified that the field notes were to facilitate transcription and not used in the analysis.

With regards to ensuring participants' perspectives and their understandings, this was done through follow up and clarifying questions along with follow up interviews. Additionally, the researchers engaged in a reflexive process to clarify their own biases to themselves throughout the analysis of interviews.