Published works

Knowledge saves lives. This is the premise to the Hyogo Framework for Action’s (HFA) call to governments to integrate disaster risk reduction (DRR education in formal, informal, and non-formal channels of every country’s education systems. There has been varying levels of responsiveness to this call at the policy level. At the school curriculum level, knowledge itself is a contentious subject. One camp espouses teaching on the scientific bases of disasters; another prefers to focus on the usefulness of indigenous knowledges. While knowledge is viewed as the key element for the practice of risk-minimisation behaviour, there are those who are less optimistic, regarding knowledge to have negligible impact to managing risk. Through a postcolonial lens, I reject the artificial compartmentalisation of knowledges (indigenous vs scientific; school-based vs community-based, etc.). My study looks at the context of education and learning and the construction of knowledge as a political, cultural and social affair. Its basic assumption is that learning happens in and outside the classroom, and the resultant ‘knowledges’ are tapped into differently for different purposes. The main objectives are to unpack the processes involved in the construction and perpetuation of DRR knowledge/s, highlight their intersections, overlaps, and disjoints, and examine their implications to the learning of disasters. An intimate, in-depth understanding of how learners in their communities make use of ‘knowledges’ in making sense of disasters is a valuable resource in informing policies on DRR education and governance at the local, state, and international levels.