This is important for many reasons, but most of all because any new focus on “fixing” BiH, by a newly energized Germany, or a Biden-led Washington DC, cannot pretend to have addressed BiH’s post-war fissures without looking at the educational system that has taken root and continues to do damage to BiH’s human and social capital.

The link between schools, education, curricula, and the prospects for either peace or further social division has been clear since the end of the war. A number of early post-war studies clearly delineated the challenges and risks, and outlined options for reducing the scope of education to contribute to conflict. Many of these were surveyed early on in this 2003 report (by the author). A burst of high-level policy engagement occurred – as with so many other efforts – in the period from around 2001 to 2007. However, meaningful change then stopped.

In conflict management and resolution, there are broadly speaking two main approaches when seeking to resolve large social conflicts. The first can be to tackle the “boulder in the road” – the biggest problem around which all other associated conflicts converge. The second is a more gradual “salami slicing” approach, in which a series of successful smaller engagements can build trust among parties and ease the way to more difficult discussions. Each has pros and cons.

In BiH, efforts to reform education through gradualism has been the predominant method of engagement for a quarter century.

The March 2002 Interim Agreement on Accommodation of the Rights and Needs of Returnee Children was aimed at mitigating the most negative efforts of blatant discrimination, for example, introducing the concept of “two schools under one roof” to allow minority pupils to study in school buildings so they would not have to learn in ad hoc schools in café bars and garages. The concept of the “national group of subjects” was aimed at finding a way to separate the subjects that focus on identity (history, geography, language, religious instruction, etc.) and those that are harder to ethnify (math, science, IT, etc.). While envisioned as a short-term stop-gap among reform-minded outsiders slicing the salami, this has instead turned into social segregation and separation by careful and intentional policy design. The “Interim” Agreement has now been in place and fundamentally unchanged for so long that a generation of children has been conceived, born, schooled, and are now adult citizens.

The boulder remains firmly in the road. Ever thinner and thinner slices of salami give the illusion of progress while contributing nothing to resolution of the broader conflict; in fact the false feeling of accomplishment is damaging as it provides a Potemkin façade of reform.

Every few years (2012, 268 pages; 2018, 60 pages; an additional OSCE report researched in 2020, but not yet published) we see another study to dissect and explain the obvious. But then such reports are followed by mere tinkering, by support for extra-curricular projects and summer camps and NGO initiatives, the hope seemingly being that an hour or two of after-school activities supporting diversity and open-minded critical thinking can counteract the 25-30 hours of formalized instruction that is intentionally structured to do the opposite.

If people are interested in thinking about education again, it is worth dispelling a few myths. The salami slices remaining are already carpaccio-thin, while the boulder has remained in place for so long it has become mossy.

Myth: The Åland Islands and Similar Boutique Rationalizations

When working at the OSCE sometime around 2008 or 2009, I recall a discussion with a diplomat who was suggesting that the educational situation in BiH, including the 2-in-1s, was really no different than what one might see in Finland. I have since heard this argument on other occasions. There is a strong desire by apologists for the status quo to compare bad practice in BiH to “good” practice in other parts of Europe. They often point to the Åland Islands, a cluster of islands that are a part of Finland and where the majority of the population speaks Swedish, having enjoyed substantial autonomy since the League of Nations was involved in this dispute following WWI.

Idiosyncratic and essentialist notions of granular “cultural autonomy” seems to be coming back in fashion, and I suspect we’ll hear more about the Åland Islands, and of course South Tyrol. According to this thinking, why not have pockets of schools in BiH teaching according to pedagogy and content inspired by or fully imported from Zagreb, or Belgrade?

As long as there is heterogeneity in BiH then the level of granularity will vary, depending on the aggressiveness of the parties pushing for more sustained division; or the willingness of minorities and “others” to quietly assimilate to the majority worldview; or the simple pace of people just getting fed up and moving to Germany or Sweden where their kids will grow up with far more diversity than in Central Bosnia canton or the eastern RS. One always returns to the Nadrealisti sketch in which regional politics of ever more granular territorial division played out in rooms in an apartment building.

Yet the key to remember is that it doesn’t matter what is done in Finland. What is happening in BiH now is what matters, and the prolonged life of divided schools and “interim” arrangements means that depending on whether a school is using a Bosniak, a Croat, or a Serb curriculum they are learning different histories, different geographies, and different cultural references. Even more troubling, they are learning that the adults around them cannot find a way to live together; they are learning that is it OK not to engage on common facts; they are learning that there is no need to try to engage with one another. Policy attention on narrow-minded instruction and the promotion of various sets of alternative national facts ensure that modern learning techniques, critical thinking, multiperspectivity, and information literacy are sacrificed in the service of contemporary and instrumentalized tribalism.

Myth: If the 54 “2-in-1s” Disappeared We Could Declare Victory

Since the 2-in-1s were set up as a stop-gap to try to end the practice of minority children being forced to study in café bars or garages, and to get them physically into the schools in their community, they have inevitably become emblematic of the ethno-national division in education in BiH. As noted above, journalists report on it, countless studies focus on it, and it is consistently noted in diplomatic reports and statements and communiques.

However, even if these schools – all in the Federation, where sufficient numbers of Bosniaks and Croats made the phenomenon possible – disappeared, the country would still have exactly as much ethno-nationally inspired segregation. The use of three ethno-national curricula would continue; the practice (particularly common in the RS) of having non-majority kids (e.g., Bosniaks) clustered in poorly equipped “branch schools” rather than in the main school would continue; and the practices of kids learning math and science together but separating from one another for the identity-focused subjects would continue.

The morbid fascination with the 2-in-1s needs to stop – it is only the tip of an iceberg.

Myth: It’s About Choice

I remember sitting with a researcher from BiH nearly 15 years ago, who worked with some mixed local/European “think tanks,” as she sought to persuade me that perhaps the 2-in-1 schools were not emblematic of separation and segregation, but were a sign of a vibrant educational ecosystem in which parents had the luxury of choice. This trope is back, but now in the Twittersphere. This holds as much water as arguments that education segregation in the US South during Jim Crow was about the “choice” of white parents. It is not about choice, but is about policy aimed to divide, to “other,” and to separate.

Myth: This is About Language Rights

As so often happens in BiH, political parties and their associated activists claim that they are simply trying to ensure group rights as constituent peoples. In the educational realm, this is often done with a focus on language, as the right to language in “one’s mother tongue” is proclaimed as inviolable. However, the constituent peoples moniker is sufficiently unique to conveniently permit the flouting of minority rights frameworks that exist to minimize the damage that can be done by either allowing for oppression of minority groups, or enabling the ghettoization of minority clusters outside of mainstream society.

For example, in 1996 the OSCE published The Hague Recommendations Regarding the Education Rights of National Minorities. It is enough to read just the very first point to recognize that in BiH it is not an issue of language rights:

“The right of persons belonging to national minorities to maintain their identity can only be fully realized if they acquire a proper knowledge of their mother tongue during the educational process. At the same time, persons belonging to national minorities have a responsibility to integrate into the wider national society through the acquisition of a proper knowledge of the State language.”

Experts largely agree that the language variants spoken by people throughout BiH – formerly called Serbo-Croatian – are sufficiently mutually comprehensible to be variations of the same language. This was of course vigorously contested in responses that everyone in the region could easily read and understand. Variations that exist are, if anything, linked more to regional identity/locale than anything else.

Finally, in addition to being toxic in BiH, the tolerance for such political manipulation has the potential to spread. A few years ago, I spoke with a prominent member of the Serbian community in Novi Pazar, who bemoaned that his daughter could not study her preferred secondary school course in the Serbian language in that city, as it was available only in Bosnian. If such separation-focused policies are legitimized in one country, there should be little surprise if they seep over and are used elsewhere, to detrimental social effect.

Myth: Extra-institutional Projects, Math and IT will be Enough

Diplomats and donors keen to slice away at the salami have initiated countless projects aimed at improving the quality of education, or offering elective extra-curricular opportunities to kids receiving a sub-standard education in the course of the formal compulsory schooling. There is an understandable hope that a focus on quality, and a focus on subjects such as math and IT, will chip away at these issues; that parents, getting a taste of quality education in non-identity subjects, will come to demand similar quality in the more sensitive “national” subjects.

This has been tried for years. Since 2006, the United World College program and International Baccalaureate in the historically prominent Mostar Gymnasium has aimed to demonstrate that a high-quality, diverse, international program within a 2-in-1 would inevitably pull parents to demand the same for their kids. That reform spillover did not happen because policymakers didn’t allow such an outcome. In the mid-2000s, the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) sought to incentivize joint learning by providing modern IT curriculum and equipment for mixed-group classes. That did not spill over. From 2016-2018 USAID promoted a STEM initiative, with the assumption that, “Strengthening key STEM competencies among students and their teachers is central to improving the system as a whole.” There is no evident spillover.

There is hope against hope that a handful of extracurricular activities or “pilot projects” will create momentum for broader systemic change. However, there is nothing to suggest this will happen in the absence of more effective pressure on those actors who want to maintain social division. Instead this demonstration of salami slicing can have detrimental effects: it very much favors those geographic locations most targeted by international donors; it allows outside actors to be relieved that they are doing “something;” and it provides external infusions of money to support a status quo that donors purport to want to change. Yet nearly two decades of such engagement have led to no educational breakthrough, and have further cemented BiH’s political dynamics into one that at best resembles a frozen conflict, and at worst is changing the structure of the conflict by actively deepening and compounding social fissures.

The post The Myth of Incremental Education Reform in BiH appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

College of Charleston, Fulbright Scholar

The release in December 2019 of the 2018 PISA data confirmed what anyone who has worked in or researched the education sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) already knows: BiH’s students are lagging significantly behind their international peers. However, when applying a more nuanced analysis that incorporates broader context, the results are more promising than they may seem at first glance.

For the first time in 2018, BiH participated in the OECD-sponsored comparison of academic achievement of 15-year-olds worldwide, and the results were very similar to other previous international comparisons (e.g., TIMSS in 2007), with scores below the international average. FENA NEWS reported these results as follows: “BiH is among 79 countries in the world that participated in the seventh cycle of the PISA survey in 2018, and the results show, among others, that every other 15-year-old has problems with functional literacy when it comes to the three segments the PISA survey covers.” Maja Stojkić, Director of the Agency for Preschool, Primary and Secondary Education, stated “our children are about three years behind OECD’s average. Reading literacy does not mean that someone can read or sign their name, but represents a process of understanding and analysis, and this research showed that more than 50 percent of students do not have basic functional literacy.” Interestingly before the start of PISA data collection in 2018, the Agency for Pre-Primary, Primary and Secondary Education of BiH gleefully announced the process on its website. “The PISA assessment has started in 2000 with the neighboring countries joining the study ever since 2006. Now, finally, Bosnia and Herzegovina has also joined PISA 2018 study, the seventh cycle of the assessment.” However, while participation was viewed positively by those who recognize the value of the country engaging in such international benchmarking exercises, the problems with PISA are well known and have been discussed at length in the literature for decades.

Although the results of this assessment should be alarming to anyone interested in the academic success of children in BiH, several points should be considered. Two issues with PISA are particularly relevant for BiH. First, some have characterized PISA as a Western-biased de facto measure of per capita GDP and, as such, can be used to coerce education in poor countries: “Many academics and educators critique PISA as an economic measurement, not an educational one. The media generally use PISA results to blame and shame school systems. And the way that some politicians, policy-makers and researchers have used PISA is more closely aligned to a political process than an educational one.” This coercive result was immediate once BiH’s 2018 results were announced: “PISA State Coordinator Zaneta Džumhur said that although the results are rather poor, there is room for improvement because unless the new steps and recommendations proposed by PISA are taken, this negative trend would continue”.

Second, PISA as a Western-oriented measure negatively affects BiH’s standing. “Even though PISA use is spreading globally, and is translated into national languages, it is still framed by Western understandings…”. Included among these “Western understandings” is a student-centered pedagogy that heavily focuses on critical thinking and the ability to examine, interpret, and solve problems – modern educational approaches that are more shallowly rooted in BiH and its neighbors in the Western Balkans than in the broader EU neighborhood to which it aspires. While BiH has been in a slow but well-documented shift toward the implementation of student-centered pedagogy and the teaching of critical thinking skills, it still has a long way to go. This situation creates somewhat predictable PISA results and the sum of these factors leaves BiH behind the curve before students even sit for the exam.

Finally, a quick dive into the PISA data, in comparison to 2018 IMF per capita GDP data, reveals that BiH performed commensurately with countries with similar financial resources, and more than held its own with other countries in the Balkans. BiH ranked 62^nd on PISA with a per capita GDP of $13,491. This ranking falls almost perfectly in line with other closely ranked countries:

While there will be outliers (e.g. Romania and Macedonia) the broader data set demonstrates that BiH is by no means an outlier in student achievement when accounting for financial resources. An examination of data from other Balkan countries suggests that BiH is doing well with the same considerations:

A More Nuanced Interpretation of BiH’s PISA Results

For a relatively poor country like BiH, these PISA results are to be expected, yet a closer examination gives both hope and guidance for the education sector. Given the many well-known challenges facing primary and secondary education in BiH, the fact that it is performing on par with—and, in a few cases, surpassing—countries with similar financial resources and histories should be lauded. If any of these well-known challenges can be overcome –  particularly the expensive and needless multiple levels of bureaucracy and administration, the inconsistent commitment to teacher training and professional development, and the continued reliance on rote memorization at the expense of critical thinking and problem solving skills – and BiH is able to put more money and resources into the classroom, where research has repeatedly demonstrated that student achievement is realized, BiH student achievement would be more competitive with similar and even wealthier countries. BiH’s students are holding their own in spite of the sub-standard pedagogical environment; one can imagine the contribution they could make if they received more modern support and educational opportunities.

Those in BiH’s public education sector as well as the donor and international community should look at these results as informative and work toward funding education in BiH at the level of wealthier countries and then ensure that funding ends up in classrooms. This could very well require rationalization of administration, streamlining, resource sharing, good practice exchange throughout BiH and beyond and an end to the weaponization of education that has greatly slowed classroom reform while eating up time, resources and human capital. Such actions could ensure opportunities to reform education into a high-quality, modern and more uniform education system that is on par and even exceeds that of its neighbors. If history is a guide, these changes will come slowly, but they are possible, and the PISA results can at minimum serve as a rallying point.

The post The Problem with PISA and BiH: A Useful Indicator, but Only Part of the Story appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

In early November last year, I attended a “Dialogue for the Future” seminar in Banja Luka organized by the nonprofit group Genesis Project. Local educators, administrators, social workers and others invested in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s youth discussed concepts including high-quality education and examined how BiH could use data from the soon-to-be-released PISA scores (https://www.6yka.com/novosti/ulazemo-li-dovoljno-u-obrazovanje-djeca-ce-najbolje-pokazati?fbclid=IwAR0Gio6bj-YEa4ZDsWuctr9MeCAhCZoyQtSraHow696okL01NeRMWXqmDpo).

Even though PISA wasn’t scheduled to release its results until December, both the seminar’s organizers and its attendees expected that BiH’s scores – this was the first time that the country was included in the PISA exercise – would reflect poorly on its education system. They didn’t need evidence from an international assessment to identify one of the more urgent challenges facing BiH’s schools—namely, the emphasis placed on rote memorization rather than the development of students’ critical thinking skills. 

PISA, which assesses students’ analytical skills and their ability to apply knowledge, confirmed the participants’ expectations when it released the results in December. The BiH scores suggest approximately half of the country’s students who took the exam are functionally illiterate in mathematics, science and reading (http://ba.n1info.com/Vijesti/a395232/Losi-rezultati-na-PISA-testovima-Svaki-drugi-ucenik-u-BiH-funkcionalno-nepismen.html).

The seminar’s focus on critical thinking and the concerns surrounding its inadequate role in BiH’s education system reflect what I hear more broadly in conversations with teachers, staff at youth NGOs, and students themselves. Their criticisms all describe a system that limits opportunities to develop and nurture students’ critical thinking skills. At a time when myriad media sources inundate people with an overwhelming amount of data and information, it is imperative that education systems guide students toward developing the higher-order thinking skills that will help them assess everything they consume. Neglecting critical thinking skills leaves students ill-prepared for a world where more information—reflecting varying degrees of reality—will continue to fly at them faster and faster.

There are multiple factors that contribute to a system where the development of critical thinking skills isn’t prioritized. For instance, one group of high school students in Banja Luka whose class I visited lamented the 15 separate courses they are required to take each semester. They attend most classes only once or twice per week. Cramming too much material into a small window limits the time students could spend assessing multiple perspectives of an historical event, or applying to different situations a concept they discussed in science class.

Some educators also raised this concern in early October when Civitas, the organization that designed the civics education curriculum in BiH, hosted its annual conference. Teachers commented on the challenges presented by once-a-week classes as they try to educate students about the structure of their government and promote civic engagement. Rather than reviewing theoretical concepts and then applying them in real-world situations, many teachers simply don’t have adequate time for the latter, leaving the purpose of civics education unfulfilled.

Students enjoy lessons requiring them to collaborate, analyze messages, and then share and defend their opinions. However, a lecture-style class directed by textbook material doesn’t lend itself to these activities. Teachers have reiterated their students’ criticisms. Some teachers point to a limited focus on methodology in pre-service teacher educator programs, and few or no opportunities to practice what they learn before taking on full-time positions. Others highlight few, if any, professional development opportunities to which they have access.

One of my conversations with a teacher illuminated the stark contrast that exists between teachers who have and those who have not had access to meaningful professional development opportunities. This teacher described a lesson they created asking students to evaluate different historical documents in the context of a specific event. Rather than lecturing the class about all of the information contained in the textbook, this teacher pulled some of the content and designed an activity forcing students to exercise their critical thinking skills. However, they created the activity using skills gleaned from professional development opportunities abroad. This teacher said their pre-service teacher educator program and the infrequent local professional development options available did not equip them with the skills necessary to produce such a lesson.

Improving an education system requires reforms at multiple levels. Making structural changes requires action from policymakers and often involves a drawn-out process. However, the aforementioned teacher’s comments about professional development mirrors what some of their colleagues highlighted at the Civitas conference. There, the same teachers who described strategies they used to incorporate practical application and critical thinking skills into their lessons also expressed a desire for more professional development. Educators who possessed knowledge worth sharing were asking for the space to share and learn.

Teachers shouldn’t have to wait for pedagogical institutes or ministries of education to organize professional development opportunities. A school employing 40 teachers possesses 40 resources, 40 minds brimming with ideas and experiences, all of whom could design a 20- or 30-minute workshop. Educators could organize these opportunities within their individual schools. Two teachers could present to their colleagues each month during a one-hour after-school session about a strategy they used to develop students’ higher-order thinking skills. Teachers could discuss how they can adapt these strategies to different content areas and grade levels. If two teachers present once a month, they would accumulate nine or 10 professional development hours each school year.

Of course, developing this culture and equipping teachers with skills to design creative lessons begins with university-level pre-service teacher educator programs. It also requires an environment in which teachers feel that such initiative will be nurtured, not deterred, and in which they enjoy the basic resources needed (in terms of their personal professional salary and the pedagogical materials/space needed to work in a 21^st century school). In spite of years of acknowledgment that these weaknesses exist, discussions at the classroom level demonstrate that there has not been a concerted effort to begin to address these needs. Some teachers mentioned a lack of funding that hamstrings local education administrations. One teacher, whose only professional development activity for the past six years has involved an annual meeting with their supervisor, noted an interest in further developing their pedagogical skillset, but was losing motivation.

A 2017 USAID report highlights pre-service teacher educator programs in BiH as “one of the weakest points in the education system overall, particularly in regard to primary education,” and “Without reform in initial teacher education, the effects of the implementation of standards will be limited” http://www.measurebih.com/uimages/Overview20of20Main20Challenges20in20Primary20and20Secondary20Education20in20BiH.pdf). This is a challenge requiring attention from individuals who shape policy. Localized professional development activities don’t require the same level of attention from the top.

Internally organized professional development initiatives won’t have as pronounced an effect on the education system as systemic changes to pre-service teacher educator programs. But they represent a start and are perhaps more feasible in the short-term. BiH’s PISA results underscore the urgency. Teachers can begin developing within their schools a culture that prioritizes professional development, collaboration among colleagues and dialogue about teaching methodologies. Teachers can initiate these workshops using the resources inside their school and in the near future without waiting for structural change, funding or months of planning. By learning from each other, teachers can acquire some of the skills necessary to adapt activities and promote the development of critical thinking skills. These workshops require a commitment from teachers, without which improvement in the quality of education BiH provides its students will not occur.

There are organizations providing professional development support for teachers; one NGO staff member highlighted the work of the Center for Educational Initiatives Step by Step, which spotlights critical thinking in its programming. NGOs must play a central role in delivering opportunities for teachers, particularly as a serious institutional void exists in this area. Professional development opportunities organized by external groups—or teachers independently holding sessions within their schools—cannot shoulder the burden in the long term. The decentralized nature of administrative education bodies in BiH hinders professional development across the country. Legitimate and sustainable improvement requires coordination across entity and canton lines, and then internationally.  

There are a few steps both the local and international communities can take to both improve the frequency of and access to professional development for teachers.

Pedagogical institutes, which are responsible for organizing professional development opportunities, should coordinate with each other and provide a centralized online repository where teachers can access information about professional development opportunities. They also should solicit feedback from teachers about potential topics for professional development sessions. This information, along with data procured from student performance and assessments like PISA, can guide the production of relevant workshops and seminars.

These surveys also create an opening through which teachers can volunteer to present to their colleagues about specific topics. Pedagogical institutes, schools, and NGOs all have the ability to provide teachers with the space and time to share their ideas. Offering teachers agency is pivotal in developing a culture that supports educators and their professional development.

Finally, uniform content standards would ensure that teachers in both entities and Brčko District develop lessons focused on the same learning outcomes. Designing such shared standards prioritizing critical thinking skills will result in teachers across BiH guiding students toward the same desired outcomes. Creating uniform standards also produces a situation conducive to idea-sharing and professional development opportunities relevant to all educators in BiH. The lack of a state-level education body capable of oversight presents a challenge when implementing uniform standards and coordinating inter-canton and entity activities. However, movement at the local level can provide at least a short-term shift toward developing a culture which values professional development and places critical thinking on a pedestal in schools. 

The post Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Pisa Fallout: Addressing the Critical Thinking Void Through Professional Development appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

The December 2019 release of the results of BiH’s first-time participation in the PISA global educational assessment provides a useful opportunity to consider the role and quality of education in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) every 3 years to measure fifteen-year old student achievement in math, reading and science.

While standardized tests suffer from well-known weaknesses (discussed in the piece by Dr. Lanahan), PISA can at least provide a benchmark on student, teacher and curricular needs in participating countries.

In BiH, the educational system has been characterized by the politics of nationalism and division that can be observed in every facet of society.  Some could argue that rather than trying to focus on these inherently political challenges, there should simply be a stronger focus on quality, teacher training, better harmonization of education with the labor market, STEM, etc. However, the very critical thinking skills required to prepare students for productive futures – and to truly boost the country’s social capital – are in fact diametrically opposed to the tools currently used to ensure that schools play a role in maintaining divisions, preventing integration and narrowing minds and worldviews. It is difficult to imagine the country’s PISA scores substantially improving absent fundamental and systemic reform. Similarly, it is difficult to imagine the politics of division continuing if a generation of young people schooled in critical thinking, media literacy and civic education grows up, begins to vote and begins to demand more from their government.

DPC is happy to host two guest bloggers, each of whom takes a unique yet complementary perspective on the issue. Dr. Brian Lanahan frames BiH’s PISA performance in light of broader critiques of the assessment globally, and finds room for optimism in terms of BiH’s youth – its human capital. Nick Ironside uses recent experience in classrooms and engaging with teachers to propose ways to improve the ability to teach and promote critical thinking. Both views can feed into discussion on the issue at a time when brain drain from BiH – and the lack of serious efforts to retain the country’s youth – is increasingly on the radar screen.

The post Pondering PISA appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.