LEARNING AMIDST CONFLICT: EDUCATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST IN WAR CONTEXTS

Abstract

Education in armed conflict zones in the Middle East faces structural challenges that transcend mere material resource scarcity, configuring itself as a question of intellectual survival and identity preservation. This study examines, through an exploratory bibliographic approach, how educational processes persist, transform, and acquire new meaning in environments marked by systematic violence, forced displacement, and institutional fragmentation. The research articulates perspectives from critical pedagogy, studies on educational resilience, and geopolitical analyses to understand mechanisms through which learning occurs despite, and frequently through, contexts of war. The results indicate that education in conflict does not represent mere continuity of traditional pedagogical practices, but rather radical reinvention of teaching-learning processes that incorporate trauma, forced mobility, and reconfiguration of educational authority. It concludes that understanding education in conflict contexts requires decentering Western perspectives, recognizing the agency of educators and students in environments of extreme precariousness, and reconfiguring educational policies that consider conflict not as exception, but as a structuring reality of contemporary educational experiences.