A Call For Curriculum Reform To Combat Refugees Crisis: The Case Of Lebanon

The study was set to elicit teachers' perceptions of adopting a new curriculum integrating Human Rights Education (HRE) into most school subjects and developing textbooks which could address the mainstreaming of the Syrian children into the Lebanese schools especially after the influx of more than 1.2 million Syrian refugees who migrated to Lebanon due to the outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011. The present study employed a descriptive qualitative methodology design. Thus, the policy context and current HRE literature were assessed and reported along with the responses to a survey developed by BEMIS, a national body established in 2001 to promote and develop capacity and support inclusion and integration of ethnic minorities in Scotland. The BEMIS survey was conducted as a mapping exercise eliciting data required to help address the study questions. The study findings yielded recommendations that underscored the necessity of developing new curriculum and textbooks integrating HRE focused on accepting diversity, building peace culture, democracy and citizenship as well as utilizing the whole-school approach and the transformative model.