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Violence against children by school staff is one of the most widespread, but also understudied, forms of violence in sub-Saharan Africa. Graines de Paix has developed an easily scalable intervention to address violence in classrooms and improve educational outcomes. LSHTM is supporting Graines de Paix to understand intervention mechanisms of change and to prepare for a larger randomised controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. Research is currently being conducted in the conflict-affected region of Man, in eastern Cote d’Ivoire.

The intervention is delivered via a cascade model and is already being implemented in several districts in conjunction with the Ministry of Education. The intervention is delivered initially in a one-day training. Using active and experiential pedagogies, the trainings seek to change teachers’ attitudes so that they are sensitized to the links between violence, children’s emotional needs, and learning outcomes. Teachers are trained in non-violent classroom management styles, and pedagogical techniques that respect children’s rights. Each trained teacher then receives and learns how to use a pedagogical kit with 16 classroom activities for children. The activities have been tested in classrooms all over Ivory.

Coast seek to develop in students peace values, attitudes, behaviours and life skills such as dialogue, peace reflexes, critical thinking, empathy, caring and proactiveness.

The intervention is one of only a small handful of interventions developed to address violence from school staff towards students in sub-Saharan Africa.

We are currently working to:

• Develop a comprehensive Theory of Change which describes how the intervention changes teacher behaviour, and how it aims to change student behaviour
• Translate, adapt and cognitively test measurement tools to capture teacher experience and use of violence and other variables important for the intervention implementation, based on the Theory of Change
• Understand the experience of teachers, students, teaching counsellors, and stakeholders (including the Ministry of Education) with the intervention; where perceived barriers and facilitators to effective implementation are; and understandings of how the intervention works
• Conduct pilot surveys before and after the intervention to test tools and procedures to measure intervention impact on teachers' self-reported use of violence and other intermediate outcomes

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Publications

This project commenced in January 2017. Please watch this space.