Piloting an Educational Response to Violence in Uganda: Prospects for a New Curriculum
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Date
2009
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
A Journal of Injury and Violence Prevention
Abstract
This pilot study assessed Mato-Oput5 (hereafter the curriculum), a new peace education
curriculum, for indications of beneficial efficacy, specifically the capacity to reduce negative
attitudes towards conflict and violence, and injury and violence rates. A cluster randomised
control design was used. Three of the six purposively selected schools were exposed to the
curriculum. Mato-Oput5 is a value-based, formalised curriculum taught by specifically trained
teachers. Its learning areas include conflict, conscience, violence, non-violence, impulse
control, anger management, kindness, forgiveness, empathy and reconciliation. The results
showed the baseline and post-intervention bio-demographic characteristics of the treatment
arms to be comparable, thus suggesting baseline group equivalence and randomisation
success. The follow-up loss was 9%. The mean pre- and post-intervention intentional incident
rates of the intervention and control groups were 270/1000 and 370/1000, and 190/1000 and
350/1000, respectively: these differences were not significant. The intervention had no effect on
post-intervention intentional incident rates. There were indications of beneficial efficacy in the
curriculum, especially its ability to cause attitude shifts in support of non-violence. Statistically
significant behavioural effects were not detected although a downward rate trend was seen in the
intervention group.
Description
Keywords
Peace education, Curriculum, Mato-Oput, Conflict resolution, Violence prevention
Citation
Mutto, M., Kahn, K., Lett, R., & Lawoko, S. (2009). Piloting an educational response to violence in Uganda: Prospects for a new curriculum. African Safety Promotion: A Journal of Injury and Violence Prevention , 7 (2).