Abstract

Over the past two decades, the role of education in promoting social cohesion has re-occupied the minds of policy-makers and educationalists—given the mounting pressure to address the various threats to social integration such as, increased social pluralism, individualism, multi-culturalisim, civic apathy, immigration, ethno-religious and civil conflicts. Despite the abundance in literature researching different aspects of social cohesion, there is little clarity in policy-related and academic discussions about the role of education in promoting social cohesion. My talk will focus on Lebanon and the manifold approaches which are implemented to promote social cohesion in the post- civil war era. The research I undertook focused on the impact of these approaches on young people’s political and civic attitudes as well as practices. The findings that this research project yielded highlighted a number of effective educational practices that could help promote social cohesion in an effective manner.

Maha Shuayb is currently the CLS Senior Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Prior to that Maha was the CLS senior fellow at the University of Oxford, St Antony’s College. Maha was also a senior researcher for two years at the National Foundation for Educational Research. Maha graduated from the Lebanese University and continued her post-graduate studies in England. She graduated from the University of Cambridge with PhD in Education. Her research focuses on the socio-political effect of education in Lebanon. She is currently conducting and directing an action research where she is piloting the impact of adopting a holistic and multi-dimensional approach to social cohesion as opposed to a subject based one on students’ political and civic attitudes and skills.

She is currently publishing a book on the role of education in promoting social cohesion.