Shared Education in a Divided Society – Leveraging Educational Partnerships for Systemic Change (EU Partnership for Peace Programme)

The project targets education as the natural condition in which and through which changes and impact on everyday life and attitudes in conflict ridden societies can be fostered and sustained. To this end, we defined as our Final beneficiaries, Educators (Pre-service and In-service, as well as principals) as prominent agents of change, as well as children (ages 6-18) and Youth leaders.

The project’s overall objectives are to contribute to conflict transformation by creating multi-level methodologies for promoting mutual understanding & cooperation between Jewish and Arab educators & students in Israel; and to nurture substantive, curriculum based activities through the introduction, adaptation and institutionalization of a proven European model for collaborative education within divided societies.

The project’s objectives will be achieved in a three-stage approach:

Stage 1: To adapt the Sharing Education Programme model for building mutual understanding developed at Queen’s University Belfast for the Israeli educational context – by developing new pedagogies, resources and communities of practice and addressing local challenges.

Stage 2: To pilot the Shared Education Israeli model in 18 Jewish and Arab schools: 6 in mixed city of Ramleh, 6 in the Negev, and 6 in the Sharon/Triangle region of Israel.

Stage 3: To disseminate nation-wide the model of conflict transformation through shared educational spaces through active engagement within national and municipal government frameworks and to advocate for its institutionalization.

The project coordinator is The Center for Educational Technology.

The project leader at Beit Berl College is Dr. Ali Watad.