Transforming technocratic practitioners’ thinking toward responsible management of land-related conflicts: experience from eastern Ethiopia

Abstract

The article presents analysis of the epistemological, pedagogical and methodological processes and dilemmas that unfolded during our efforts to transform the conceptions and understandings of our participants’ thinking about ways of managing land-related conflicts. The paper reports our evaluation of the thinking and perspectives that guided our interventions and how we dealt with the situational challenges we encountered. It reports what we did to emerge out of the dilemmas we encountered in our efforts to help others think over and learn from their situations. The educative value of our efforts and encounters for other similarly situated practitioners and change agents will be stated at the end. We emphasise the educative potential of establishing links between contexts and thinking processes toward transformative and critical learning.

Keywords:

• Reflective learning
• transformative learning
• transformative education
• conflict sensitivity

Acknowledgements

The authors express their gratitude for the anonymous reviewers and editor of Research in Post-Compulsory Education for their comments. They thank also Life and Peace Institute (LPI) for the support it provided to train the participants and carry out on-the-job mentoring to entrench their learning. The zonal and district offices also deserve acknowledgement for showing interest in the project and cooperation during the training.