Risk Assessment of Violent Extremism in the Learning Environment of Secondary Educational Institutions in Bangladesh

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to explore the potential risk of violent extremism at secondary educational institutions in Bangladesh because last few years in different violent attacks, the engagement of students from different colleges and universities is traced. Therefore, a question generally comes forward to the academia, policymakers, and the general people whether the different elements of our teaching-learning environment contain any promoting factors to induce the students towards extremism. Consequently, the study defines extremism and violent extremism in the context of Bangladesh for her different historical background, culture, and values. To explore this issue the researcher has followed an exploratory inductive method including both qualitative and quantitative approaches. It was found that the factors related to the teaching learning environment are less significant than the general factors or the factors outside of the educational institutions. That means the factors outside of educational institutions are significantly found in the attitude and characteristics of the respondents. This finding implies that out of these three types of educational institutions from the three curriculums do not play any significant role to develop extreme attitude or behavior. It is an important output against the previous studies that showed that both mainstream and religious educational institutions are mainly contributing to promoting violent extremism in Bangladesh. Moreover, this study explored different general factors and factors related to the teaching-learning environment and the characteristics of violent extremists from the key informant interviews of the local multi-disciplinary scholars, experts, and teachers. Extracting the factors and characteristics from their interviews, the questionnaire and items are developed for the students' survey at the secondary level. The survey also supported most of the qualitative findings. The findings showed the new generation is a bit frustrated and pessimistic about the role of the state, politics, and society of Bangladesh. Anyone is vulnerable to violent extremism if he or she gets exposure.