Connected learning as collaboration and psychosocial support: A critical reflection on a bridging programme for refugees in Uganda

Uganda currently hosts approximately 1.7 million refugees (93% fully registered refugees, 3% Asylum Seekers and 4% stateless persons), the most in Sub-Saharan Africa. Most refugees come from South Sudan (57%), Democratic Republic of Congo (32%), Burundi (3%), and Somalia (3%). Refugees largely live in rural based settlements within 12 districts alongside host communities and only 8% residing in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. This has posed challenges related to refugee access to economic, medical, and social services including education. These challenges are often addressed in education through connected bridging programmes, which are designed to provide refugees instruction to help them access and succeed in higher education. This paper explores one such bridging programme and the research that accompanied it, Foundations for All, which was a blended programme designed to provide access to higher education for refugees. Through critical reflections of the overall programme gleaned from interviews with teachers and students, we focus on two discrete elements of this project - the collaborative practices of the disparate project partners and the embedded psychosocial support - and discuss how these two elements might inform the further conceptualisation of connected learning in refugee education contexts.