The Role of Education in Peacebuilding: Methodological Framework for Three Country Case Studies

The methodological approach builds on the analytical insights of the education and peacebuilding literature review, addresses some broader limitations of contemporary research in the area of education and conflict, and incorporates knowledge exchange opportunities into the approach in order to strengthen in-country stakeholder coordination and policy reflection. It combines a political economy and conflict analysis approach to the analysis, and explores education and peacebuilding at four analytical levels: national post-conflict environment level, education sector level (and its interaction with other sectors and actors), international actor level (the varied roles, rationales and practices of the international community) and education and peacebuilding programme level. In doing so it seeks to locate education and peacebuilding initiatives in their full complexity and trace their interactions with local, national and international actors, institutions and structures.

The findings of the country case studies will then be synthesized to draw out broader generalizations on the role, nature, evidence and potential of education and peacebuilding in post-conflict reconstruction and UNICEF's role therein. In order to ensure that research tools and methods are appropriate for the task, a pilot case study was carried out in May 2011 in Sierra Leone. Two further case studies took place in Lebanon and Nepal between July and August 2011. This paper begins with a guide to the insights that steer the methodological approach. This is followed by a research framework, the detailed research questions and sub-questions and the methods of data collection and analysis. The concluding part of the paper summarizes the core activities and outputs and presents the project timeline. (pp. 4-5)