Evaluation of arts education in humanitarian emergencies: evidence for practice

Résumé En

Education is the fourth pillar of humanitarian aid. Arts education is therefore increasingly used in these emergency interventions with children affected by conflict. However, arts programs are underdeveloped because of the difficulty to evaluate and provide evidence of wellness in participants. Collaborative research, is particularly important for improving scientific knowledge and the capacity of communities to build their resilience to disasters and armed conflict. Humanitarian interventions are often intended to be "community-based" or "bottom-up" in order to start from the conception of their needs and adapted processes. Our field of education in emergencies has developed out of a need for humanitarian response to needs and, above all, out of field practices. A cooperative didactic engineering is a method of research based on design, but which aims above all at the community approach while putting action at the center. This type of collective aims to study the situations established in common experiences, around the points of view and contributions of each other. The general objective of our thesis is to accompany, through cooperative didactic engineering, socio-cultural animators through the artistic biography. It aims to transform and evaluate their practices to promote resilience and empowerment in camps in Iraq. We will present the 4 stages of the didactic engineering while raising the issues and obstacles of "practices-based-evidence" for evaluation. We will conclude on the different types of possible operationalization, including the one in progress in our thesis work and the theoretical challenges raised by this type of research.