Case Study on education continuity in fragile settings. Online–Offline trauma‑informed pedagogy training for Gaza’s Universities
When your university is destroyed, when you’ve been displaced more than once, when your students are living through unimaginable loss — how do you keep teaching? Faculty members across Gaza have been coping with the collapse of their education system following the destruction of universities and the severe psychosocial toll of the ongoing crisis.
To help higher‑education staff continue teaching and support their students, over the past months, 100 faculty members from Gaza’s universities joined an online/offline training on trauma‑informed pedagogy. Led by Saida Affouneh and supported by AUF, the programme focused on two things everyone desperately needed:
1️⃣ How to teach with almost no connectivity
2️⃣ How to support students (and themselves) through the psychological impact of the crisis
With electricity cuts and unstable internet, the training combined flexible online sessions with WhatsApp‑based interaction. Materials, tasks, voice notes, peer support — everything flowed through the group. Participants adapted lessons into tiny, low‑bandwidth pieces so students could follow from wherever they were. Participants learned how to integrate psychosocial support (PSS) and social‑emotional learning (SEL) into their teaching, while also gaining strategies to manage their own emotional wellbeing.
Despite displacement, insecurity, and limited infrastructure, around 90 lecturers from Al‑Aqsa University completed the programme. Many reported feeling better equipped to understand students’ needs, adapt materials into shorter, accessible formats, and provide first‑aid psychological support in hybrid learning environments. The initiative highlights the resilience (“sumud”) of Gaza’s academic community and shows how flexible, sensitive, low‑tech approaches can sustain learning even in extreme fragility.
Case submitted by Saida Affouneh, Professor of Education in Emergency and Online Learning, An-Najah University.
Picture credit : alaqsa.edu.ps
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