1. Engaging teachers as agents of peace and social cohesion: Understanding impact
Yusuf Sayed
Presented at CIES Taking Stock and Looking Forward Annual Conference 2016,
Vancouver, Canada, 7-10 March
Understanding impact
Types and Forms
Types and forms of impact : teachers as agents of peacebuilding in Rwanda and South Africa
Some aspects to consider – impact mediators, limits to impact

2. Research Impact Pathways (the linear model)
Academic impact: publications, citation, training
External: socio-economic, public policy, capacity building

3. Research Impact Pathways (the process embedded model)

4. Research Overview
The main research question that guides this study is:
To what extent do education peacebuilding interventions in countries promote teacher agency and capacity to build peace and reduce inequalities?
In answering this question we pay particular attention to how they seek to mitigate gender, ethnic, religious and socio-economic inequities to, in and through education.
The core aim of the research is to:
examine how teachers and teaching are supporting education for peacebuilding
enhance national and global policy dialogue and understanding about teachers as agents of peacebuilding
create and communicate new knowledge to policy experts, policy makers, civil society organisations at local, national, regional and international level on the effects of education peacebuilding interventions and
develop indicators and a metrics system for evaluating the efficacy of educational interventions concerned with teachers as agents of peacebuilding.
To achieve these aims the project explores six inter-related themes:
Global and national policy contexts framing teachers’ work
Teacher recruitment, deployment and management
Curriculum and textbook reform
Teacher professional development (initial and continuing)
Teacher accountability and trust
Teacher pedagogy

5. Impact as publication: conceptual
Popular
Academic
Press release
National press
University website
External website
Social media
Reports
Authored books
Chapters in books
Journal article
Conference contribution
Working paper
Policy briefs
Open data

6. Impact as engagement: networks and connectivity
Networking
Policy engagement
Four key modes:
Workshops with stakeholders
Critical Reference Group
Targeted Policy Workshops
Roundtables
Several main targets:
Government but also parts of government
Government to government
Communities of researchers
CSOs

7. Research capacity as impact
Institutional and individual
PG students in the project
Junior staff in the project

8. Impact mediators Think-tanks NGOs Professional Associations
Consultants
Education officials

9. Limits Ideas and discourse (the policydilemma?)
Non-correspondence between research and policy and practice
Capacity development limited by grant time limits
North-South dynamics and dialectic

10. Impact as contingent and opportune
Context embeddedness
The conjunction of politics and biography
The conjunction of time and space
The external shock – xenophobia in South Africa as reason for why the project took on importance
The impact of chance