Reconstruction and Resilience in Rwandan Education Programming: A News Media Review

Abstract

This study evaluates news portrayals of resilience in the newly renewed Education for Sustainable Peace in Rwanda initiative. There remains a gap in understanding about how Rwanda's education approaches are portrayed and disseminated to the public by news media. This research uses an inductive coding analysis and layers Entman's framing theory to evaluate new media portrayals of resiliency in the reporting of domestic and international media outlets. This research demonstrates that there has been little media attention paid to Rwanda's education system outside of Rwanda, despite the newly revised programming. This research also finds that in media sources which do discuss Rwanda's education system, portrayals of approaches to resilience that have the potential for inclusivity are far more common than approaches which are top-down and exclusive. These findings serve to contribute to literature in both the context of Rwanda's place in global governance and the broader discussions of educational resiliency.