Border cosmopolitanism in critical peace education

This paper intends to contribute to recent developments in the theory of critical peace education. The role of cosmopolitanism in critical peace education is examined, particularly in relation to universal moral inclusion, secularism and universalism. It is then recommended that critical peace education draw from post-universalist and dialogical approaches to cosmopolitanism. Walter Mignolo’s border cosmopolitanism is suggested as a decolonising framework for critical peace education. This would entail the theory of critical peace education orienting itself towards the aim of reconsidering cosmopolitanism from the perspective of coloniality. Connections are drawn between border cosmopolitanism and Paulo Freire’s problem-posing education. The result is a vision for critical peace education to empower participants through centring personal and lived experience in critical deconstructions of cosmopolitan discourses.     

Museums for peace: agents and instruments of peace education

Although museums for peace claim peace education to be a primary mission, their definitions of ‘peace’ and their aims and practices for peace education vary widely. In this article, we draw from the field of critical museology and the knowledge construction perspective to understand the role of museums for peace in the service of peace education. From the constructivist viewpoint, the museums’ narratives are not objective or historical truths. Rather they are the museum designers’ constructed interpretations of the events, people, and places that are memorialized. The museums’ exhibits, narratives, and programs reflect a wide range of definitions of peace including some which conflict and contradict each other. The variations in defining peace contribute to differences in how the museums view and exercise their role in educating for peace. From this analysis, we observe how contemporary museums for peace can play a significant role in peace education by raising awareness about multiple definitions of peace and by enabling audiences to reflect on, discuss and participate in deliberated paths toward personal peace and cultures of peace.     

The everyday peace project: an innovative approach to peace pedagogy

A critical task for peace pedagogy is to challenge views of peace as primarily responses to declared war. Crisis-based politics tend to focus on exceptional situations and fail to capture the entire spectrum of violence. Premised on the idea that peace cannot be understood in isolation of larger structural problems, this paper proposes the concept of ‘everyday peace’ as a framework for peace education. Drawing from a pedagogical initiative, we examine how students engage with the concept of everyday peace and present our findings in three related domains: (1) definition of everyday peace, (2) application of everyday peace principles and (3) role of collaboration in everyday peace approaches. Our analysis underscored two important themes in participants’ definitions of everyday peace: (1) peace as a value-based praxis and (2) individual-level and systemic components of everyday peace. Applying these principles to a violent event in the local community, participant responses emphasized compassion, cultures of peace and the need to draw reflexive, meaningful connections between local and global contexts. The participants also outlined the synergistic role of collaboration in everyday peacebuilding. We discuss our findings in relation to extant research and consider implications of an everyday peace framework for holistic peace education.     

Toward a critical peace education for sustainability

This article proposes the need for peace education as a field to embrace critical power analysis of place in efforts toward social and environmental sustainability. Rather than status quo reproduction, a critical peace education for sustainability should both elucidate and transform the power dynamics inherent in structural violence and cultural violence. The inherent rights of people, plants, and ecosystems to live with dignity and to prosper are proposed. Practically speaking, the article offers perspectives from a critical pedagogy of place and an earth connections curriculum unit as vehicles for transformative education.     

Problematizing war: reviving the historical focus of peace education

In the last forty years, peace education has broadened its focus from primarily international peace and the prevention of war to an approach that encompasses social justice, environmental education, critical theory, and multicultural education. While this is a positive evolution in many respects, there is a danger in de-emphasizing the actual critique of war and militarism. This article looks at the reasons why peace education should revive its strong historical focus on problematizing war. There is a strong emphasis on how educators can implement this in the classroom by fostering an environment where students can critique both past and contemporary conflicts. This renewed focus is of special importance in our modern globalized world, especially in militarily powerful nations such as the United States.     

Interfaith dialogue at peace museums in Kenya

This paper makes a case for further studies on the contribution of peace museums to interfaith dialogue debate. Based on our experiences as museum curators, teachers and peace researchers and a review of published materials, we argue that there is a lacuna in the study on the contribution of peace museums to the interfaith dialogue debate. The development of community peace museums in Kenya,, in predominantly Christian communities, and the use of traditional religio-cultural artefacts in peace education and peace building is a case of interfaith dialogue worth documenting. With religious conflict threatening to tear the fabric of society apart, the question of interfaith dialogue is now paramount in the search for sustainable peace and development.     

The dancing body in peace education

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the potentials of the dancing body in peace education seen from a transrational perspective. The author explores how the multifaceted and creative body as worked with in the conscious dance and movement practice Open Floor can be tapped into and drawn upon to engage the multiple potentials of humans as contact boundaries at work. She reflects in this regard upon her own experiences as an Open Floor teacher. The article first discusses how the experience of dancing in Open Floor unfolds a creative process that is 1) both intrarelational and interrelational, and 2) always in transformation. Further, the article discusses how the dancing body is engaged as holistic, relational and dynamic through the Open Floor teaching tool 4 × 4, and how this dancing body supports a creative engagement with intra-inter dynamics in peace education.     

Shining light into dark shadows of violence and learned helplessness: peace education in South Korean schools

The paper illustrates how a culture of violence is perpetuated and reproduced in South Korea through schooling and argues that peace education could help transform a culture of violence to a culture of peace. Critical ethnographic methods and a framework of peace education were applied to a sample of secondary schools in South Korea to argue that a disturbing culture of violence and learned helplessness were present; this comprises themes of direct and indirect violence through iljin (a group of students who are considered key perpetrators of school violence); a colonized false ideology and resistance to social justice. More positively, findings are also used to generate possibilities for pedagogical change based on peace education – an approach that proves useful both as an analytical frame for examining peace-violence relations in education and society and as an essential pedagogy for progressing towards peace in South Korean schools.     

Building peace through education

ABSTRACT

Can we pave the way to world peace through education of the next generation? This paper focuses on how teaching social and emotional learning (SEL) skills in schools could promote the positive development of children and youth so that they can choose prosocial, nonviolent ways of building relationships with others. First, research on how belonging and fairness develop early in life is briefly reviewed. Then the authors introduce SEL and the research supporting its impact, and explain how it can be supported through various strategies in the classroom, including programs, teacher–student relationships, cooperative learning, approaches to discipline, and solving problems and dealing with conflict peacefully. Building peace by promoting social and emotional development through education offers hope for future generations.     

The promotion of peace education through guides in peace museums. A case study of the Kyoto Museum for World Peace,Ritsumeikan University

This paper focuses on how peace education at a peace museum is promoted by a volunteer guide service for visitors. Peace museums are places where many materials related to war and peace history are on display. To support the learning experience of museum visitors, many peace museums in Japan provide a volunteer guide service. The Kyoto Museum for World Peace, Ritsumeikan University, started such a service more than 20 years ago. A citizens’ group, called Friends for Peace, is in charge of the museum guide activities in cooperation with the museum. This article explains the purposes and nature of the service, and also reports on a survey of similar services offered by other peace museums in Japan.     

Historical memory education for peace and justice: definition of a field

This article proposes a new of field of research in social sciences education: Historical Memory Education (HME). Despite the large amount of educational experiences following the end of violent conflicts and totalitarian regimes during the twentieth century, historical memory has not been recognized as a field in educational research. From a review of research and experiences worldwide, the authors identify a new field in education research that cannot be reduced to peace education, bullying prevention, or history education, but that takes elements from all these fields, as well as from local pedagogical experiences, to face the challenge of healing the wounds of longstanding violent conflicts. This article organizes prior research in a comprehensive framework that describes the levels, pedagogical principles, and spaces of HME.     

History education in schools in Iraqi Kurdistan: representing values of peace and violence

The Kurdistan Regional Government has implemented a wide range of reforms in Iraqi Kurdistan’s education system since its establishment in 2003. This qualitative study utilises critical discourse analysis to investigate the content of History Education (HE) textbooks (grades five to eight) and to assess how far peace education values and principles have been integrated into the curriculum. The ME’s top-down approach has faced significant resistance from teachers and it fails to consider the importance of hidden and null curricula. It focuses on the history of Iraq, Kurdistan, and Islam, glorifies war, excludes different narratives or interpretations, and fails to foster critical debate or enquiry. The curriculum appears to encourage violence and foster divisions between Muslims and non-Muslims, and the null curriculum is regulated to maintain the dominance of the group in power.     

Education for a culture of peace: the culture of peace news network as a case study

The Culture of Peace News Network, an internet news service, is analyzed in the framework of a general approach to education for a culture of peace. Its format reflects the eight program areas for a culture of peace as adopted by the UN General Assembly. Among its other operating principles are universality of news with all cultures and regions of the world given equal priority, requirement that reflection be accompanied by action and that news should be positive and open to debate, that ‘slow news’ is as important as ‘fast news,’ and that readers should participate by writing as well as reading. The Network has yet to achieve its goal of forcing commercial media to consider actions for a culture of peace as newsworthy, but it is suggested that this will depend on the growth of the global movement for a culture of peace which remains rather small at the present time.     

Looking for peace in national curriculum: the PECA Project in New Zealand

This is the pilot study for the Peace Education Curricular Analysis Project – a project that seeks to become a longitudinal and global analysis of national curriculum statements for pro-peace values. National education as a system of organized learning can act as a transmission belt – a cultural institution that assigns communal ideals and values and uses pedagogy to echo social standards. As this analysis considers that it is possible to assess non-peace education for peace education qualities, this study analyzed New Zealand’s early childhood, primary, and secondary education curricular statements to ascertain the presence or absence of three elements common in peace education programs: recognition of violence; addressing conflict nonviolently; and creating the conditions of positive peace. The methodologies used in this mixed methods study include directive and summative content analysis. This analysis finds that the curricular statements (2) of New Zealand have made progress to educate students toward peace and non-violence and that in general, the early childhood curricular statement incorporates a greater amount of pro-peace content than the primary and secondary curriculum statement. Opportunities exist to strengthen peace education content in future New Zealand curricular statements.     

An education for peace model that centres on belief systems: the theory behind the model

The education for peace model (EFPM) presented in this paper was developed within a theoretical framework of complexity science and critical theory and was derived from a review of an empirical research project conducted in a conflict affected environment. The model positions belief systems at the centre and is socioecologically systemic in design to capture the holistic dynamic of education within community. There is increasing interest, in both academic and development communities, in closing the gaps that exist between theory and practice in educational development in conflict affected settings and providing practioners with practical models. This paper makes a contribution in this through the presentation of the EFPM and the theory that informed its development. There are five key components to the EFPM: belief systems, learning experiences, students, teachers and schools. Belief systems are core as knowledge is generated from culture. Learning experiences are viewed as opportunities for growth, and schools are viewed as environments that provide opportunities and engender cultures for learning and conflict resolution. Teachers, drawn from the local community, are co-creators of these cultures, environments and opportunities and agents of effective change.     

Diffraction,transrational perspectives,and peace education: new possibilities

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on the theoretical lens of diffraction to conceptualize a new approach to transrational peace education theory and praxis in the post-2016 posttruth political era and Industry 4.0 economic period. The paper reviews foundational concepts and approaches from key founders of the field – Paulo Freire and Betty Reardon – before turning to two contemporary peace education scholars – Wolfgang Dietrich and Hilary Cremin – to investigate the contributions of recent scholarship toward diverse diffractive possibilities for transrational peace education. In this sense, diffraction offers pluralistic views and transformative possibilities for transrational peace education in varied contexts. Transrational peace education builds upon peace education to integrate affective and aesthetic perspectives into peace education theory and praxis. Before concluding, we offer some theoretical implications and pedagogic responses for scholars seeking to work at diffractive transrational intersections. The contribution of the paper is toward theorizing new perspectives for transrational peace education theory and praxis in the 21^st century.     

‘Pedagogies of resistance’ and critical peace education praxis

This paper explores ‘pedagogies of resistance’ – or critical and democratic educational models utilized by social movements – and how global examples of engaged educational praxis may inform peace education. The central inquiry of this article is ‘How can educational projects that resist larger social, political and economic inequalities offer understandings about how we learn, teach, and act for peace in diverse settings?’ Drawing upon literature from various fields, ideas and insights are offered about how the field of peace education can better respond to multiple and diverse realities, particularly those facing marginalized communities. The article provides an overview of key tenets of peace education and ideas central to ‘critical peace education;’ offers a framing of ‘pedagogies of resistance;’ and, lastly, details what directions emerge by putting these two educational forms in conversation.     

Education for territorial peace in Colombia: what role for transrational peace?

ABSTRACT

In this article, we present the idea of a territorial peace and explore it in the context of Colombia. We locate our investigation in peace education, particularly in Colombia’s Catedra de Paz, and explore the adaptations and application of the iPEACES programme (originally the iPEACE programme, developed by one of the authors with Bevington in 2017) as a possible way of contributing to sustaining the plurality of many peaces in this and other contexts. We outline the Innsbruck school’s many peaces approach and Elicitive Conflict Mapping (ECM) framework in order to show how they contributed to developing the iPEACES programme – which is responsive to territorial peace in the Colombian context. We end by presenting limited findings from four surveys with teachers in Colombia who attended a taster day for the iPEACES programme in 2018. We discuss their contributions and perspectives, and the ways in which we feel the iPEACES programme might be taken up more widely in schools in Colombia and elsewhere.     

Teacher Glenn: how a political scientist educated a peace researcher

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that the nonkilling political scientist Glenn D. Paige could be seen as an extraordinary peace educator. It will be organized through three words – reading, writing and talisman. It begins with a brief discussion of the method used in understanding political scientist Glenn D. Paige’s life as a teacher. Then, the author’s ‘reading’ and ‘writing’ experiences, from taking courses with him, and writing a PhD dissertation under him, will be examined. The way in which political science education could perhaps be considered a form of peace education will be discussed. The concluding section on ‘talisman’ advances Paige’s central idea of politics in terms of making decisions, especially to choose alternatives which could mitigate the killing effects and enhance nonkilling possibilities.     

Peace education research in the twenty-first century: three concepts facing crisis or opportunity?

This article focuses on the concepts of peace, education and research, and the ways in which they combine to form the field of peace education and peace education research. It discusses the ways in which each can be said to be facing a crisis of legitimation, representation and praxis, and the structural and cultural violence that inhibit efforts towards a more inclusive global conception of peace. It will review some ways in which it may be possible to rise to Gur-Ze’ev’s challenge to respond to post-structural critiques of the field. Drawing on participatory, auto ethnographic and arts-based research methodologies, it suggests ways of creating synergies between research and aspirations towards positive (rather than negative) peace.