Education, Conflict and Social Cohesion

Is schooling a potential catalyst for the outbreak of identity-based conflict? How can education contribute to social and civic reconstruction, particularly in societies emerging from violent internal conflict?

Education, Conflict and Social Cohesion explores these questions and more in societies as diverse as Bosnia and Herzegovina and Guatemala, Lebanon and Mozambique, Northern Ireland, Rwanda and Sri Lanka. Using a common analytical framework, the studies assess changing conceptualisations of social cohesion as reflected in the shifting Curriculum paradigms and rationales that have governed educational policy reform. In doing so, each of the studies examines the potent role of curriculum policy in reconstructing social and civic identities and the challenges that policy makers in each of these societies have been confronted with in terms of changing definitions of national citizenship. These challenges range from the determination of language policies in multilingual and multicultural societies, to the sensitive and sometimes contentious learning content related to the reinterpretation of national history, and the development of a sense of common citizenship and of shared destiny. Based on these experiences, Education, Conflict and Social Cohesion argues that in order to ensure that processes of education reform are meaningful contributions to reconciliation and peacebuilding, the subtle and complex relationships between schooling and conflict need to be explicitly recognised and examined.