This article explores the “two faces” model of education through which Kenneth Bush and Diana Saltarelli (2000) describe the positive and negative roles that education can play in situations of ethnic conflict. The authors apply it more narrowly to analyze the effect of inclusion and diversity in education in a conflict situation. In addition to the Bush and Saltarelli model, they use an analytical framework of inclusion that they developed during their research. This framework defines inclusion as consisting of three dimensions: access to schools, quality and relevance of the learning experience, and equality and diversity in management structures. Employing a participatory approach to collect data on social inclusion in education, they conducted fieldwork in 2006 along the Thai-Burmese border in six refugee camps inhabited predominantly by members of the Karen ethnic group. From case studies on adolescent pregnancy and marriage, special learning needs, and the language of instruction, their findings demonstrate how tensions between the positive and negative effects of education manifest themselves in a protracted refugee situation in Thailand. They supplemented their findings with individual interviews with 28 young women who left school after becoming pregnant and/or getting married, as well as with statistical data from schools and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In sum, their findings illustrate the explicit and implicit mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion operating in schools and how they are linked to societal attitudes, the refugee experience, and notions of identity and nationhood.
