Natural disasters are disruptive to families and communities, particularly when cascading effects continue over time. Such events, and ensuing disruptions to family life, present risks to young children's development, including oral language. Recognition of this potential vulnerability has led to calls for early childhood programming to support…

Risk and uncertainty can destabilise and reconstruct the relationships between medicine, policy and publics. Through semi-structured interviews with medical staff following the Fukushima 3.11 Disaster, this paper demonstrates the way in which disruption (caused by disaster), coupled with uncertainty (in this case, around radiation risk) can serve…

The role of the schools is very critical in order to develop environmentally-aware and ecologically-conscious students. This descriptive-correlational study sought to measure the level of awareness and practices of 100 Science students in a public secondary school in Zambales, Philippines. Findings revealed that the Science students are very aware…

Natural disasters create immense challenges for young children by exposing them to a high degree of adversity. Interventions designed to build resilience in the aftermath of a natural disaster may help buffer the negative consequences of these adverse experiences. In this article, we report the results of our quasi-experimental evaluations of two…

The motivation to adopt innovative communication and e-learning practices in education settings can be stimulated by events such as natural disasters. Education institutions in the Pacific Rim cannot avoid the likelihood of natural disasters that could close one or more buildings on a campus and affect their ability to continue current educational…

In this article the author discusses the implementation of the Education Renewal in Greater Christchurch policy which affected nearly 40 schools in the aftermath of the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes. It describes the accumulated social, psychological and emotional toll that closures and mergers took on the schools and their communities. It…

This paper proposes that the future is uncertain for many children. Both natural and human-made disasters are adversely affecting the lives of millions of children and their families. An example of an environment-related disaster is cited from Sichuan Province, China, where a massive earthquake killed some 70,000 people in 2008. How the teachers…

This study investigated the feasibility of a teacher implemented intervention to accelerate phonological awareness, letter, and vocabulary knowledge in 141 children (mean age 5 years, 4 months) who entered school with lower levels of oral language ability. The children attended schools in low socioeconomic communities where additional stress was…

Indigenous African education grew out of the immediate environment, real or imaginary, where people had knowledge of the environment. Indigenous education inculcated a religious attitude that imbued courtesy, generosity, and honesty. At colonization, Africans were thought of as primitive although they had their own systems, contents, and methods…

This paper considers the challenges of promoting inclusive education in geographically isolated rural communities in Bangladesh. Inclusion is explored from both government and non-government (NGO) providers, and identifies challenges and opportunities for implementing inclusive practices. Challenges for implementing inclusion are linked to…

Three decades ago, Stephen Kemmis (1990) argued that curricula provide insights into how nations and states interpret themselves and how they want to be interpreted. He also noted that 'debates about curriculum reveal fundamental concerns, uncertainties and tensions which preoccupy nations and states as they struggle to adapt to changing…

New Zealand has faced an unprecedented series of disaster events in recent years. The Canterbury earthquakes provided an opportunity to document the role that schools played in supporting their communities to respond to and recover from such events. It is important that we capture what we have learnt from these experiences to help other schools in…

The behaviors of individuals on the issue of being able to cope with disasters are directly proportional to their level of preparedness and awareness. For this reason, revealing the individual's level of awareness on disasters is both the first phase of the studies to be carried out on this issue and an important contribution to the social…

This paper contributes to the conceptual and empirical development of 'preparedness pedagogy'. Preparedness involves learning, thus disaster risk reduction (DRR) should be discussed more in the field of education, particularly its sub-discipline of public pedagogy. Disaster risk reduction education should have an element of "a pedagogy in the…

Natural disasters are frequently exacerbated by anthropogenic mechanisms and have social and political consequences for communities. The role of community learning in disasters is seen to be increasingly important. However, the ways in which such learning unfolds in a disaster can differ substantially from case to case. This article uses a…