Evidence on Curriculum—Citizenship Education and Classroom Teaching Methods

Abstract

This chapter argues that citizenship education is often seen as playing a potentially key role in peacebuilding in post-conflict societies. The chapter begins by discussing overview studies of citizenship education in post-conflict, developing countries before going on to examine evidence from a range of African, Asian, Middle Eastern and Central and South American countries. There follows a section of the chapter specifically on teaching methods used in classrooms in a range of post-conflict, developing countries. The chapter concludes that the evidence on system-wide transformation of citizenship education and classroom teaching methods in order to help to facilitate peacebuilding in post-conflict, developing societies is as weak as evidence on school structures and other potentially positive areas of curriculum intervention. As in the previous evidence-based chapters, this chapter suggests there may well be some individual schools or teachers who have made successful attempts to change their practice, but the evidence suggests that even these are not entirely straightforward and unproblematic.