(2018). Interfaith Education in Muslim, Jewish, Christian Schools in Israel. Journal of Religious Education, v66 n2 p99-110 Sep. The paper critically approaches the western epistemological tradition and its psychologized perspectives that pose identitarian and cultural categories as standing at the basis of societal conflicts. It suggests that staying attached to a conceptualization of identity as a, more or less, fixed cognizant entity and of culture as a, rather, fixed body of traditions and meaning might not allow multicultural, interfaith, or peace education initiatives geared towards soothing societal conflicts achieve their goals. It does so by reviewing data gathered at the integrated bilingual and multicultural schools in Israel which I have been studying for over a decade utilizing a variety of ethnographic tools. It concludes by locating the problems exposed within present social sciences theorizing and suggest possible ways to overcome these problems…. [Direct]
(2020). Global Citizenship Education for Global Citizenship? Students' Views on Learning about, through, and for Human Rights, Peace, and Sustainable Development in England, India, New Zealand, South Africa, and Sweden. Journal of Social Science Education, v19 n4 p63-97. Purpose: In this study, we explore students' views and experiences in relation to education about, through, and for human rights, peace, and sustainability in the global north and south. We investigate what students after nine years of schooling see as central issues and productive actions linked to key elements of global citizenship education (GCE) to better understand the complexity of GCE in theory and practice. Design: We use a survey designed in line with theories of global citizenship education. Using a mixed methods approach, we analyse responses from 672 upper secondary school students, aged 16-19, in England, India, New Zealand, South Africa, and Sweden. Findings: We find that students in different contexts may experience global citizenship education very differently, even if they are all part of a global community with guidelines from UNESCO. Dimensions of human rights education, peace education, and education for sustainable development are evident in both the global north… [PDF]
(2015). The Promotion of Peace Education through Guides in Peace Museums. A Case Study of the Kyoto Museum for World Peace, Ritsumeikan University. Journal of Peace Education, v12 n3 p247-262. 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…. [Direct]
(2019). The Development of Hiroshima International School: The Influence of Jean Piaget. Schools: Studies in Education, v16 n2 p218-235 Fall. Jean Piaget is well known as a child and cognitive psychologist. He is less understood as the founder of the discipline of genetic epistemology, the scientific study of the genesis and development of human meaning-making. He is also a major proponent of constructivist learning and activity pedagogy. A major supporter of the first international school, the International School of Geneva (which later developed the International Baccalaureate), and an early director of both the world's first child study center, the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute, and the International Bureau of Education (later a part of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), Piaget was deeply committed to student self-government, collaborative, active learning, and peace education. In 1980 I became principal of the Hiroshima International School of peace and culture, and we used his seminal work, "The Right to Education in the Modern World," based on Article 26 of the… [Direct]
(2020). Building Bridges in Police-Youth Relations through Experiential Peacebuilding: How Reduced Threat and Increased Humanization Impact Racialized Structural and Direct Violence in Baltimore. Journal of Peace Education, v17 n3 p324-345. In the United States, trust in law enforcement is plummeting alongside increased crime rates and police-involved killings, primarily of unarmed black men, making this social issue of imminent importance. Moreover, globally, security actor reform and relationship-building between communities and security forces is essential to post-conflict reconstruction and violence prevention. This research examines Outward Bound's Police Youth Challenge (PYC) program with officers and youth in Baltimore to assess the long-term impact of encounter-based peace education programs that use experiential peacebuilding to bridge divides between youth and security actors. To achieve this goal, interviews, focus groups, and observations were conducted with youth, officers, and key informants, and we conducted analysis of secondary data collected by Outward Bound and external evaluators. We found that PYC reduced intergroup anxiety and threat through building trust and facilitating mutual humanization… [Direct]
(2016). Institutionalizing Culture of Peace in Basic Education through Appropriate Curriculum Implementation. International Journal of Curriculum and Instruction, v8 n1 p9-21. This paper reports a study that was aimed at revealing the extent to which teachers implement Peace Education curriculum in Nigeria. The study was a survey and covered junior secondary schools in Enugu North and South Local Government Education Authorities in Enugu State, Nigeria. The sample constituted randomly selected 200 junior secondary school teachers. Questions that guided the study were based on how frequently teachers engaged in peace-prone instructional activities involving Interactive Instruction, Cooperative Learning, Conflict Resolution and Empathy. Data was analyzed using mean and standard deviation. The major findings showed that a good number of the respondents did not adopt peace-prone instructional strategies in curriculum implementation…. [PDF]
(2014). Trust Building as a Strategy to Avoid Unintended Consequences of Education. The Case Study of International Summer Camps Designed to Promote Peace and Intercultural Dialogue among Adolescents. Journal of Peace Education, v11 n1 p81-100. This article aims to offer both a theoretical contribution and examples of practices of trust building in peace education; the article presents an empirical analysis of videotaped interactions in the context of peace education activities in international groups of adolescents. The analysis regards two international summer camps promoted by the School of Peace of Monte Sole, established in the Province of Bologna, Italy, in the place where in 1944 a Nazi assault killed almost 800 children, women and old people. Each camp lasted two weeks, and was attended by four delegations of 10 adolescents coming from different countries; the camps aimed to promote adolescents' ability in conflict resolution, their interest in peaceful relationships and their respect for different perspectives, and reducing their prejudices and stereotypes. Our analysis highlights some ways in which facilitators' actions create the conditions of adolescents' trusting commitment in group activities. Through… [Direct]
(2013). Law and Order in the Classroom: Reconsidering \A Course on Citizenship,\ 1914. Journal of Peace Education, v10 n1 p21-35. This article explores the tension between social control and democratic participation in the first American peace education curriculum, \A Course in Citizenship\ (1914). Previously, this \Course\ has been read as a case study of progressive era peace education, during which the call to teach democratically increased in volume. Building on this critical history, the \Course\ can also offer historical perspective on the high value of discipline and obedience to law inscribed in some teachers' views of citizenship education. Read alongside archival transcripts from the American peace movement before World War I, the warrants for predicting future peace in the \Course in Citizenship\ suggest that peace education requires innovative methods of constituting classroom authority on the basis of representation…. [Direct]
(2019). Whiteness, Patriarchy, and Peacebuilding in UN Higher Education: Some Theoretical and Pedagogical Implications from One Case Institution. Irish Educational Studies, v38 n4 p481-499. Peace in and through education has become an important educational development agenda. It has been included in human rights frameworks since 1948, and is emphasized in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet, there are few studies examining how Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS) scholars, and by extension the institutions they embody, translate this agenda into the classroom. This paper then critically examines how PACS scholars from one United Nations higher education peace institution understand, practice and experience the challenges and contradictions of teaching for peace in the twenty-first century. In the study, data were collected through semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and document analysis with 25 PACS lecturers and 108 postgraduate students. Findings suggest that despite aspirations toward the liberal peace ideals of international understanding, equity and democratic peacebuilding as expressed by scholars and in peace studies literature, the… [Direct]
(2013). Shallow Roots Require Constant Watering: The Challenge of Sustained Impact in Educational Programs. International Journal of Higher Education, v2 n4 p91-100. Socially-oriented educational programs often face societal barriers. Peace education in a region of prolonged conflict faces a negative socio-political environment that works against its effects. The media, leadership, educational system and other societal institutions continue to express a culture of conflict. Recent studies show that the effects of peace education programs are short-lived and methods to sustain the effects over time are needed. The present paper describes the societal-psychological climate of prolonged conflict, the goals of peace education in such regions, the challenges of achieving these goals, and possible ways to overcome these challenges. The main argument is that peace education programs should be designed to effectively manage the "reality dissonance" between the sought-for effects and socio-political environment. Mechanisms for sustaining educational change are described along with considerations for program design. Finally the paper offers… [PDF]
(2012). Harvesting Social Change: A Peace Education Program in Three Acts. Journal of Peace Education, v9 n3 p211-223. This article narrates the story of how a peace education program, over the course of a year, shifts from a more traditional form of peace education as conflict resolution skill building to a critical form of peace education. The path of this journey was neither straight nor direct; rather it meandered through an iteration of itself that actually produced another form of violence among its educators. Thus, in this one-case study, three different forms of peace education are observed–a traditional form, an "unpeaceable" form, and a critical form. Building on Noddings–notions of care, Freire's notion of critical consciousness and Bajaj's and Brantmeier's complementing notions of a critical peace education, the author argues that it is not until the program identifies a space where youth and the facilitator can be vulnerable in meaningful dialog, that the program becomes critical. As the data from this activist research project show, it is in these dialogs that youth have the… [Direct]
(2015). The Contribution of the Secondary School Curriculum to Peace in Kenya. Journal of Education and Practice, v6 n3 p164-173. The Kenya Government recognizes the role of peace in socio economic development as emphasized in the national anthem while the national goals of education endeavour to promote national unity, sustainable development, peace, respect for diversity, and international consciousness among others. The Kenya vision 2030 underscores the need for peace and respect for human life through education and training. The study sought to establish whether there are any objective(s) in the secondary school curricula that addresses peace, whether there was content on peace education in the curricula. It further sought to establish the factors contributing to conflicts in secondary schools and assess level of teachers' awareness of factors that contribute to peaceful co-existence among learners in secondary schools. This research used a cross-sectional survey design approach to investigate peace education outcome on learners. A sample of 59 teachers and 15 curriculum developers was chosen for the study…. [PDF]
(2018). Nonkilling 101 — Is a Nonkilling Society Possible?. Journal of Peace Education, v15 n3 p248-254. Following the definition presented by Paige, nonkilling refers to the absence of killing, threats to kill, and conditions conducive to killing in human society. How can education contribute to bringing about such societies? As the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) called upon the global community to 'significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere' by 2030, a growing need exists to understand the educational measures and transformations relevant to building societies where human killing is greatly reduced and eventually absent. Just as scholars, practitioners and policy-makers in other areas have had to rethink their impact in contributing to this global goal, in 2015 the "Vasa Statement on Education for Killing-Free Societies" was adopted, proposing concrete recommendations. The articles put together in this special issue of the "Journal of Peace Education" provide grounds to sustain the crucial role of education in curving the… [Direct]
(2018). English as an Equalizer between Arab and Jewish Students in Israel. Journal of Peace Education, v15 n2 p121-143. This paper describes an educational intervention program between 12 Arab and 12 Jewish students who were studying to become teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Israel. The study reports on the ways in which the program impacted the participants, and focuses on the role of English, the Lingua Franca and language of communication, in creating neutral grounds for mutual understanding and contact. The outcomes show that English played a crucial part in facilitating open, pluralistic dialog and intercultural communication in intergroup contact. English acted as a bridge between Jewish and Arab students, in the current Israeli conflictual situation, to enhance communication across boundaries. Findings further indicate that while the participants were aware of the cultural, social, and religious differences between them, they recognized the similarities that brought them together and chose to focus on them as the basis for collaboration. The study suggests implications for… [Direct]
(2018). Building Peace through Education. Journal of Peace Education, v15 n3 p345-357. 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…. [Direct]