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The Southwest Florida region experienced COVID-19 and a major hurricane between 2020 and 2022. The increase in major emergencies, which are often unpredictable, can be highly distressing for those affected. This phenomenological study describes the lived experiences of academics through these two significant traumatic events and explores the relationship between their experiences and their resilience. Using constant comparative thematic analysis, two themes were identified: creating community through an ethic of care and finding resilience through purpose. Implications and recommendations are provided for future work to help inform higher education leaders and policymakers of the effects of reoccurring trauma on academics and give leaders a better understanding of academic resilience and resilience development. Furthermore, by understanding academic resilience in the face of adversity, this study provides academic leaders with insight to create new strategies to support academics and foster resilience in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents West and East African nonformal education projects as a platform from which to view the interrelationship of participation and transformation in the educational experiences of community, NGO, and state participants. In the context of neo-liberal pressures, carried by an international free-market movement in the 1980s, a wave of administrative decentralization initiatives in education rippled across Africa. In the 1990s, a wave of democratization added itself to global decentralization pressures. As these cases demonstrate, the education decentralization process in nonformal education has resulted in varied and often unintended local interpretations, reactions, and ultimately inaction despite nationally and internationally accepted EFA reform directives. The implications of the findings argue for a rethinking of participatory development for nonformal education programs in decentralized systems. (Contains 1 note.)

Guinea and Senegal are multilingual countries that use French as a language of instruction in the formal educational sector with some significant exceptions. As in many other African countries, such exceptions in Guinea and Senegal, use local African languages primarily in the non-formal sector for a variety of purposes, such as adult literacy and basic education for youth. In this chapter, we examine mother tongue (MT) education as it contributes to a type of citizenship education, focusing on the ways that MT education can, with varying degrees of effectiveness, redefine local communities and forge alliances with communities of near and distant places and at local, regional, national, and global levels. The two case studies presented here, of the N'KO schools in Guinea and the "Ecole Communautaires de Base" programs in Senegal, offer examples of different approaches to MT education and its impact prevalent not only in Guinea and Senegal but also other countries in the immediate region of West Africa and beyond. (Contains 3 notes.)