Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan (CW4WAfghan) together with Community World Service Asia (CWSA), a Pakistani NGO, is implementing the KIX-Asia “Networked Improvement Communities for School Leaders towards Equity and Inclusion” research project in UNHCR camps for Afghan refugees in Peshawar, northern Pakistan. Over 800,000 Afghans have fled to this part of Pakistan since the Taliban takeover. The two organizations work together to research Afghan school leader agency to better serve Afghan students in exile, and are identifying  factors that will support or hinder education entities scaling this model in other UNHCR refugee villages and schools. 

The mixed methods empirical research study explores how school leaders can realize and act upon their agency to solve inclusion challenges in their schools and communities through taking an online course on inclusive education and collaborating with other school leaders to solve problems. Thirty school leaders participated in the project. Most were Afghan refugees, many had limited understanding of inclusive education and at baseline and none of the school leaders had participated in learning activities online. 

The research findings favorably support the notion that given the right support and tools, educators can solve their own local inclusion micro- challenges, especially when they work together – they value support and inspiration from their peers and theNIC  facilitator.  Using the structured approaches encountered in the open course they develop a sense of agency to tackle small  inclusion problems  they previously saw as being beyond their capabilities. They increasingly use different forms of data to identify inclusion issues and try out innovative solutions to address these.    

This research contributes to the body of research in the Global South about the capacity of educators, especially those living in remote or marginalized communities, to make small changes at the school level to tackle inclusion challenges related to student access and participation.