EDUCATIONAL RESPONSES TO SOCIAL INJUSTICE IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Transnational Education, educating across borders, now made feasible via internet and collaborative technologies, is being studied by many non-governmental organisations (NGO), governments and international bodies. The growing number of external and internally displaced persons in the Middle East has led to a humanitarian crisis. Among the myriad issues in this crisis resides the challenge of providing education for those children whose education has been truncated. According to UNICEF almost 4 million Syrians refugees are living in camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. Some of these refugee camps house more than 50,000 people. Many are children and youth in need of skills but who have little, if any, access to education.

Providing such access is a humanitarian commitment that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is uniquely able to provide with its cultural, linguistic and religious ties to the displaced. Its impressive resources and its commitment to a knowledge economy, places it among the few who have the capability and vision to implement this most important of roles.

A new player in the field of international education, the UAE now boasts the largest concentration of International Branch Campuses (IBCs) in the world. In recent years UAE’s capital, Abu Dhabi, has formed strategic partnerships with internationally respected universities who have pioneered in distance delivery.

The purpose of this study is to assess if, educational practitioners, residing in the Emirates, believe they and the UAE currently have the means to contribute to the realization of continued education and enhanced opportunity for those in the region’s war-torn nations.