“The Politics of Education Reform Policies in Lebanon Post Taif”

BB 904, Beirut campus

The Department of Education has invited Dr. Maya Shuayb to give a lecture entitled “The Politics of Education Reform Policies in Lebanon Post Taif”.

Dr. Shuayb is a is a senior fellow at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. She has a BSc in Sociology and a MEd in Guidance and Counselling from University of Newcastle. She went on to study for an MPhil degree in Research Methods at University of Cambridge. She also graduated with a PhD degree in Education from University of Cambridge.

Shuayb was appointed a research fellow to work on a project funded by the Economic and Social Research Centre, which looked at teaching and learning in Higher Educational Institutions for students with special needs. She was also a senior researcher at the National Foundation for Educational Research and was a visiting scholar at the American University of Beirut (AUB). Maha’s research interests lie mainly in the sociology of education and research methods. Of particular concern to her is the conduction of developmental research that can feed into policy-making and practice. She conducted several studies on community cohesion and citizenship education in England and Lebanon.

Her current research at the University of Oxford focuses on the social and political implications of education in Lebanon. In particular, she looks at the role of public and private secular and faith schools in promoting or hindering social cohesion in Lebanon. She is currently directing an action research project which pilots an alternative model to the subject-based approach adopted by most schools in Lebanon for engendering loyalty and patriotism amongst Lebanese students. The model, which offers a multi-dimensional approach to education for social cohesion, is currently being applied in four public and private schools in Lebanon, and in collaboration with the Ministry of Education.
Another research project that Dr. Shuayb has recently completed examined school effectiveness and youth aspirations in five secondary schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Lebanon.
She has also conducted several research studies using the appreciative inquiry approach to develop educational practices.