Nonlinear Education: A Rhizomatic Look at the Experience of Teachers Engaged with the Education of Refugee Children at Transit and Reception Centres in North Macedonia, between 2016 and 2017

Abstract: The inability to provide adequate education for refugee children in Transit and Reception Centres in the Republic of North Macedonia during the refugee crisis (2016-2017), defines the context-specific precarious conditions that stimulated teachers on-the-ground to seek new educational methods. The research questions inquire about the teachers’ methods outside the scope of formal/non-formal education and the ways in which their experiences and perspectives contributed towards their individual and professional development. Through inductive phenomenological inquiry, the experiences of teachers engaged in refugee education were observed through seven hermeneutic interviews and analysed through the lens of Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of rhizomes (1987) and the process of becoming, both as a theoretical framework and as an analytical tool. The research finds that the teachers intuitively deviated from established models of education by creatively inventing made-to-measure educational methods (nonlinear education), suitable for the provision of education within the refugee centres’ conditions of temporality. The thesis’ macro level findings stipulate that modes of learning that are in flux, morphing and continuously developing, are suitable educational methods providing positive results in the given context. The micro level findings evidenced that the teachers’ practices escaped the authoritarian separation between teacher and pupil, advocating for relationalism, while embracing emotions, compassion and agency. The ‘silence’ in existing literature, related to the conjunction between the experiences of teachers and the theoretical notions of the rhizome and becoming, is given a voice through this thesis, by extending the understanding of multicultural education as a form of social justice teaching.