Pauline E. Nichols

Educational Climate and Culture: an Ethnography from Iraqi-kurdistan Pauline E. Nichols

The purpose and uniqueness of this study takes us from the traditional management approach of climate and culture to connect with the ordinary educational experience of a child with his or her teacher. I believe the identification of value assumptions can help to create a transformational classroom experience for children. The transferring of this presupposition to a region, in which three generations have experienced war and trauma with the harshness of a non-benevolent dictator, reveals bittersweet results. It is bitter in its recognition of a wounded society whom the majority ignores and it is sweet in its expression of hard earned freedom. One generation has a foot in the past glories of the royals and the other in the brutalities of the Ba?athist. Another generation has known nothing but want and disappointment with the new government, and yet the upcoming generation is still young and yet to discover new found freedom. Each generation seems to collide with another in this present educational system. This is a timely study, rich with voices of concerned citizens, who value the chance to speak to a world that has only yet discovered them.