The Rohingya is a stateless minority group in Myanmar, suffering from ethnic and religious armed conflicts, state persecution, and displacement. Since the escalation of violent conflicts in the early 2010s, they have fled the country and sought refuge in neighbouring countries, and in the biggest numbers, in Bangladesh. Living in densely populated refugee camps, Rohingya children receive very limited access to education and are exceptionally vulnerable to illnesses, violence and trafficking. This discussion paper describes the conditions and contexts under which education is offered, and identifies the serious problems and gaps in provision for Rohingya children in Bangladeshi refugee camps.

This paper reviews the themes emerging from Bangladeshi teachers’ experiences of taking part in the initial research and the development stage of a professional development programme they were involved with. The Secondary Teaching and Learning Programme is an information and communications technologies‐enhanced supported open distance learning programme of professional development in English‐language teaching. This paper presents evidence arising from semi‐structured interviews carried out with teachers from a pre‐pilot study for the English in Action project. The teachers participating in this study reflect upon six months’ experience of using professional development materials (course material of audio podcasts enhanced with text and images; videos of classroom practice; audio of classroom language) and classroom resources (audio recordings of text‐book reading passages, songs, poems and stories), all accessed via portable digital media players (iPods).

The higher education sector globally has gone through a transition because of the coronavirus outbreak, and as a result, many traditional higher education institutions across the globe have been forced to go online to provide education and arrange assessments so that their students could continue their education and complete their courses. Unlike developed countries, at the beginning of the lockdown, most of the higher education institutions in Bangladesh shut down their operations, and a few universities started moving toward online distance teaching and learning activities. Based on an empirical study, this article discusses the challenges of teaching and learning in higher education in Bangladesh during the COVID-19 lockdown. It also identifies good practices to overcome those challenges. An online survey was conducted to collect data from university teachers throughout the country. Findings from this study show that it was a great challenge for most universities to adopt online teaching and learning models at the beginning of the pandemic. Many factors, such as preparedness, limited resources including financial means, low digital literacy, internet connectivity and suitable physical and virtual infrastructure affected this transition. However, the findings also show that the COVID-19 pandemic created new opportunities for educators and practitioners to explore various professional development activities by trying out different digital pedagogies through practice and reflection. This article also highlights the immediate effect and long-term impact on teaching and learning regarding preparedness for future approaches to education in emergencies.

There are clear distinctions among the concepts of emergency remote teaching and learning (ERTL), online distance teaching and learning (ODTL), and open and distance learning (ODL). This chapter explores different aspects of changes that happened in the field of higher education during the time of the global crisis. It focuses on how COVID-19 pushes educational institutions and educators to provide emergency remote teaching and learning opportunities by switching from traditional pedagogies to online pedagogies. This chapter also highlights the digital competencies, which educators and learners had to develop because of the necessity. Special attention is then given to different pedagogical aspects of emergency remote teaching and learning and how digital competencies help in developing innovative pedagogical strategies and practices to face the challenges and overcome the barriers to provide support and continue education.

The increasing use of media and technologies for enhancing teaching and learning is an important current trend to overcome the challenges of schooling and teacher training in the changing world. Many countries in the Global South are trying to adopt technologies in their school and teacher training systems to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals. Though some recent research shows impacts of using technologies for enhancing teaching and learning in technology-poor contexts, no research actually addresses the challenges and difficulties associated with using the technologies in those specific contexts. This article presents interview data derived from secondary schools teachers in Bangladesh, in a context beset with many difficulties associated with technology use. In a pilot project, Apple iPods were introduced in 2009 to explore the challenges and consequences of using technology in schools. The data reveal the implications for the teachers professional development when they used the iPod as a multimedia player to access educational resources made available to support teaching and learning. This article has also thrown some light on current debates about using technologies for enhancing teaching and learning in technology-poor contexts.Peer reviewe

The social purposes of education are long term and oriented towards the construction and maintenance of a sustainable future. This article focuses on developing-country contexts with relatively low formal school enrolment rates, where dropout and failure rates are alarming, and where many children leave school semi-literate, soon to relapse into illiteracy. This has negative consequences for their participation as individuals in the creation of a sus-tainable world. Since the 1960s, nonformal basic education has offered alternative educational and training activities, with innovative learning methods aimed at the development of practical skills, including matters of health, sanitation, literacy, to be applied in real-life situations. Drawing on a five-year empirical study of young people at the point of transition be-tween the nonformal and formal sectors of schooling in Bangladesh, this article analyses the nonformal education paradigm against a framework of models linking education and sustainable development. By following an activist citizen model, nonformal education empowers students to critically consider new circumstances and to believe that they can make a change when needed.