Experiences of the Polish teachers of primary schools in working with war refugee students from Ukraine – selected problems, limitations and implications for pedagogical practice

The ongoing war in Ukraine has caused that millions of people, mainly women and children, were forced to flee their country. Poland, as a country bordering Ukraine, accepted the most refugees. In consequence, Ukrainian school-age children started studying in Polish schools but preparing Polish primary schools (schools which educate children who are 6/7–15 years of age) to accept such an unimaginable number of Ukrainian students became a challenge. This was due to the fact that Polish teachers of primary schools had no previous experience of working with refugee students. The following article presents the results of the research survey conducted among 359 Polish teachers working in primary schools, the majority of whom were women (91.4%) and men (8,6%), aged 25–60 years. The research using a questionnaire technique was conducted in 4 Polish provinces that accepted the largest number of Ukrainian refugees. The aim of the research was to identify the mechanisms hindering education and integration of Ukrainian refugee students attending primary schools and to obtain information on the assistance activities provided by Polish teachers addressed to the refugee students. The developed conclusions could be used in schools in Poland and other countries.

Bilingual education and identity politics in post-war Sri Lanka

Multilingualism is widely celebrated as a quality that education should promote for purposes of peacebuilding, inter-cultural understanding and the fostering of transferable skills. But the experience of much of postcolonial Asia illustrates how language can divide as well as unite. In the conflict-ridden multicultural society of Sri Lanka, language disputes have long contributed to social tension. Bilingual education, introduced at secondary level in 2002, was heralded as advancing both skills formation and conflict resolution. This study investigates its implications for identity construction, while illuminating how various stakeholders have understood and responded to related policies. The findings suggest that bilingual education has contributed to expanding disparities between rural and urban communities, while also creating new power dynamics at the classroom level, exacerbating distinctions of social class alongside those of ethnicity. This article thus challenges romantic visions of bilingual education as a democratising measure conducive to building sustainable peace in post-conflict societies.

Comparative education and its discontents

A group of comparative educators have embraced the notion of decoloniality, including presenting their ideas in a recent issue of Comparative Education devoted to the topic. In this piece, I engage with the concept, both as it has appeared in comparative education journals and in the broader decoloniality literature confronting modernism and Eurocentrism. I readily accept the critique made that comparative and international education (CIE) as a field emerged in the post-World War II years embedded in the US-led postcolonial project. However, as I spell out in this piece, the critique is conveniently ahistorical, completely ignoring the anti-imperialist, anti-racism, and feminist movements that rocked the world in the 1960s and 1970s. All this made CIE contested terrain ever since. Further, I consider some important issues regarding the politics of decoloniality as an organising onto-epistemology for proposing new educational models and for seeking alternatives to modernism.

Beyond Threats: How Allies and Bureaucratic Competition Shape the Initial Development of Military Cyber Capabilities

The politics of how nations design their militaries when they start developing new technologies is a critical question in international relations as it has implications on military effectiveness, civil-military relations, war conduct, power projection, and peace and stability. Cyber is the latest example of a technology that countries have started developing within their militaries. Yet, there is limited theoretical and empirical work on the factors that explain how nations choose to design their militaries to start developing cyber capabilities. Using panel data on state military organizations between 2000 and 2018, this article shows that allies and bureaucratic competition affect the military design choice whereas threats are insufficient in explaining this choice. These results are robust to a number of alternative specifications and generally succeed in out-of-sample prospective predictions. The findings have important implications for the study of national security policy, alliances, and innovation.

Introducing REBLEX: A new dataset on rebel leaders in exile

Rebel leaders’ exile that constitutes transnational nature of civil war can influence civil war dynamics as well as post-conflict phenomena. Nevertheless, the exile of insurgent leaders has garnered less academic attention than that of outgoing state leaders. In this article, we introduce a new dataset that records extensive information on the exile of all rebel leaders active from 1960 to 2020, over the span of 1960 to 2023. The Rebel Leaders in Exile (REBLEX) dataset contains information on exile period, destinations, types, and activities. The article describes the structure of the dataset and variables, reveals spatial and temporal patterns of exile, and demonstrates the potential applications of the data for future research. In particular, it suggests that the REBLEX dataset can contribute to investigating a wide range of research topics, including rebels’ exile as a war strategy, its impact on civil war diffusion and outcomes, insurgent leaders’ post-tenure fates, war recurrence, and postwar peace-building process.

Bargaining without guns: Military leaders going public

Under what conditions do militaries go public, and how do they do so? The military can act as a political actor, pursuing its institutional interests and mobilizing support from its own constituency. Civil–military relations scholarship has traditionally emphasized coups as the central form of military intervention in politics. As coups became less frequent after the Cold War, however, scholars have increasingly turned attention to the alternative ways militaries influence politics short of seizing power. This study argues that going public offers the military an alternative channel to advance its bureaucratic interests and shape politics at a lower cost than overt intervention. Using a novel dataset of public statements by top military leaders, this research shows that militaries are more likely to go public during periods of political uncertainty or agenda mismatch, conditional on the social ties they can leverage.

Globalization and conflicts in moral education in Japan: Historical perspectives

Japan has experienced three major phases of opening up to the world in its history: the Meiji Restoration in the late 19 th century, the post-World War II era, and the current age of globalization. Each period has necessitated a re-evaluation of moral education, with a new vision wavering between tradition and innovation. This article explores the ideological, curricular, and pedagogical debates surrounding moral education within these historical contexts, analyzing how modernization, democratization, and globalization have shaped Japan’s moral education. The findings suggest that while contemporary educational reforms incorporate global perspectives, further initiatives are required to foster an inclusive society that respects diversity.

London in the Second World War

Abolitionist visions: finance and freedom in the post-Civil War US South

This article examines two competing visions of abolition following the US Civil War. We use conjunctural analysis to put critical agrarian and abolition studies in conversation. We argue that, for Northern liberals, abolition was an individualistic and competitive fix for a crisis of global capitalist production; in contrast, radical Black agrarians envisioned abolition as the beginning of a new freedom rooted in cooperative economies. Our conclusion reflects on the ways that this history resonates with Black freedom struggles today.

Food systems of internally displaced persons in Ukraine during Russia’s full-scale war

Food insecurity is one of the main challenges facing internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Ukraine during Russia’s full-scale invasion. Based on in-depth interviews with IDPs, host communities and humanitarian organisations, we analyse three ways of providing food to IDPs: (1) food aid, (2) cash transfers and (3) food self-provisioning. We apply the concept of food sovereignty to look beyond nutritional needs to understand IDPs’ relationship with the land, the host community and their agency in the resettlement process. This study contributes to a better understanding of the food systems of displaced populations in Ukraine and other war-torn countries.