Child-Friendly Schooling for Peacebuilding

This study critically examines child-friendly school theory and practice from a peacebuilding perspective. It begins by exploring the child rights substructure of child-friendly education before going on to examine the key principles and primary features of the child-friendly school – child-centredness, inclusiveness, democratic participation and protection – and what they mean in terms of child-friendly practice in the classroom, school and community. Attention then turns to fundamental concepts and key ideas in peacebuilding education. The idea of conflict sensitivity is introduced and key features of conflict-sensitive education elaborated. Using a socioecological model of change derived from ecological systems theory, a theory of change for peacebuilding education is then offered.

The study then turns to looking at characteristic child-friendly school elements through a peacebuilding lens, with the frequent use of case study examples. There follows a section on child-friendly curriculum, teaching and learning. Under the key child-friendly school principle of democratic participation, the potential within child-friendly frameworks for student involvement in school and community in peacebuilding initiatives is explored. The study then turns to the potential within system-wide child-friendly education for peacebuilding, with sections on the professional development of teachers and others, the use of situation analyses, multi-sector and multi-level partnership approaches, national policy development, national child-friendly school teams, and national-level monitoring and evaluation. The main text ends with recommendations for making child-friendly schooling more peacebuilding resonant. Appendices offer further case studies of the synoptic variety and a listing of standards and indicators for child- friendly schooling for peacebuilding.