Following years of struggle, South Sudan became an independent nation in 2011. While this marked an important achievement for those who had long suffered under the government of Sudan, political violence has continued to dominate South Sudanese society. Women in South Sudan have faced particularly difficult circumstances as they have been victims of this violence and have also been largely excluded from participation in the male-dominated political realm, due to a lack of education and low status. In an effort to address this issue, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Higher Education for Development (HED) have sponsored a project, the South Sudan Higher Education Initiative for Equity and Leadership Development (SSHIELD). The project is creating a network of women leaders with the skills and knowledge to contribute to peace-building and social cohesion in South Sudan. To that end, fourteen women are currently completing master’s degrees in education at a U.S. university with a focus on conflict transformation and will return to South Sudan to take on leadership roles inareas such as curriculum development, teacher education, educational policy, and educational research. The women participating in this program represent the diverse geographic, linguistic and ethnic makeup of the South Sudanese population. They also typify the resilient spirit of the South Sudanese women who have endured enormous hardship during the years of war and conflict in their country (Wanga-Odihaimbo, 2014).

Among the key assumptions guiding this project are that (1) educational institutions can play a significant role in creating a peaceful and cohesive society, and (2) that women leaders can make a unique and important contribution to peacebuilding in countries like South Sudan. Furthermore, recentresearch hasshownthatsuccessful educational projectsin post-conflict areasfocusonpeaceeducationandeducation forgenderequity(Bar-Tel&Rosen,2009;Burde,Kapit-Spitalny,Wahl, &Guven, n.d.; USAID, 2007). Therefore, the SSHIELD master’s degree program incorporates content related to peace-building, gender equity, education in emergencies, and conflict resolution into the courses on school curriculum, educational leadership, teaching for diversity, educational psychology and learning theory, and research methodology. TheSSHIELD participantsare being prepared toweavethemes ofpeaceand democraticcitizenship throughouttheentireschoolcurriculum, an approach that has been shown to be successful in educatingademocratic citizenry(Bickmore, 2004).

Supportingteachers to teachconflictmanagementandpeace-makingstrategies leads studentsto takeownership over managingconflictthemselves andcreatesan implicitcurriculumarounddemocraticcitizenship. Preparingateaching force, however,tochangeits didactic, teacher-centered methods tolearner-centered,democraticclassroomsis a significanttask.Workingwithin acountrywith poor infrastructure,few schools, exceptionallylargeclass sizes, no national curriculum,and ahigh dropout rate, hasbeen donebefore.BothNamibia(O’Sullivan, 2004)andUganda(O’Sullivan, 2006), provideexamples of howthis transition canbemade. Usinganadaptiveapproach that was highlyresponsivetothe uniquecontexts,successful implementation ofteacher trainingto use learner-centered strategieswas shown toincreasestudent learning. This study explores the extent to which the SSHIELD project will produce a group of women educational leaders that will have similar success by addressing the following research questions:

• How does a program of graduate study in education influence the development of leadership capacity in a group of South Sudanese women educators?

• Which elements of a program of graduate study in education have the greatest impact on leadership development in a group of South Sudanese women educators?

• How do the personal histories of a group of South Sudanese women shape their learning and development in a graduate program of study in education?

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