(2013). Daisaku Ikeda's Philosophy of Peace, Education Proposals, and Soka Education: Convergences and Divergences in Peace Education. Journal of Peace Education, v10 n3 p303-322. In this article, the authors introduce and explicate Daisaku Ikeda's contributions to peace education. Ikeda is a Buddhist leader, peacebuilder, school founder, and prolific author whose six decades of contributions to peace education have had a global impact in practice but have remained unexamined in the extant, particularly Anglophone, literature. Using excerpts and bilingual discourse analysis of the Ikeda corpus, the authors focus on five aspects to trace the past, present, and future of Ikeda's contributions to peace education: first, they trace the biographical roots of Ikeda's contributions to his early educational experiences and encounter with Josei Toda (1900-1958). Second, they outline the Nichiren Buddhist philosophy informing Ikeda's approach to peace education. Third, they explicate in the context of peace and peace education Ikeda's concept of value-creating, or Soka education ("soka kyoiku") relative to value-creating pedagogy ("soka kyoikugaku")… [Direct]
(2015). From Clouds of Chemical Warfare to Blue Skies of Peace: The Tehran Peace Museum, Iran. Journal of Peace Education, v12 n3 p263-276. Despite the limited number of peace museums around the world, there exists an essential role for existing peace museums to promote a culture of peace and peace education. The purpose of this article was to introduce the origins, rationale, scope and work of the Tehran Peace Museum in Iran. The concept of the museum is to facilitate peace education and develop peaceful environments drawn from the personal experiences of war survivors. The museum encompasses exhibitions about the horrors of chemical and nuclear warfare and is balanced with awareness programmes, bridge-building dialogues, connections with other peace museums and a comprehensive peace education programme catering for younger and older members of society. It offers the space and opportunity for a community of learning within the museum and welcomes fresh ideas and initiatives from visitors and volunteers. The Tehran Peace Museum is unique in its body of volunteers, men and women who have been directly affected by chemical… [Direct]
(2017). Social Media as Space for Peace Education: Conceptual Contours and Evidence from the Muslim World. Research in Comparative and International Education, v12 n1 p95-109 Mar. In this research, we present a conceptual framework to examine the potential of social media as an educational space for peace education. In particular, we examine the characteristics and dynamics of social media that set it apart from other traditional media and educational spaces. Specifically, we conceptualize features of social media such as: social media as "knowledge commons"; imagined communities of purpose; public and private voice; civic engagement; and the experts' gaze. Finally, we provide empirical and discursive evidence from social media in the Muslim world with specific examples from the Pakistani blogosphere in support of the conceptual framework drawn earlier…. [Direct]
(2019). Incremental Transformations: Education for Resiliency in Post-War Sri Lanka. Education Sciences, v9 Article 11. There is growing evidence to support the relationship between levels of gender inequality in a society and its potential for conflict. Positive attitudes to gender equality in and through education strengthen social cohesion; consequently, there is a need for gender-transformative education for peacebuilding. Drawing on the 4Rs (representation, redistribution, recognition, and reconciliation) framework in conjunction with the idea of incremental transformation with a focus on resilience, this study examines how eleven ethnic minority high school girls from Sri Lanka understand the transformative role of education in their lives as it relates to peace and gender equality. Education was a source of hope for the participants of this study and thus contributed to their resilience. However, rather than fostering and capitalizing on this resilience to build social cohesion and peace, education and the school systems are silencing them. This silencing is evident in the acceptance and… [PDF]
(2020). Let Us Stick Together. Montessori Life: A Publication of the American Montessori Society, v32 n3 p34-37 Fall. The author has established a tradition of putting together a "stick bundle" that symbolizes the community in her Montessori Early Childhood classroom. In the first month of the school year, each member of the classroom finds a stick from the outdoor playground area and brings it back into the classroom. This article presents how the class creates a stick bundle, which is a concrete demonstration that shows the children that there is strength in unity and encourages partnership. The author also discusses how to creatively integrate Peace education into various curriculum areas. She decided to introduce different peacemakers from various continents to study. For Asia, Mahatma Gandhi was the obvious choice due to his nonviolent methods of gaining freedom for India after almost 200 years of British rule. This article also briefly presents how learning about Gandhi is integrated into the curriculum…. [Direct]
(2021). Making Peace with the Past: Peace Education in Post-Conflict Aceh Societies through the Application of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Journal of Social Studies Education Research, v12 n2 p330-376. This paper has two objectives, namely, to map the problems of history learning to promote peace in post-conflict societies and offer applicable solutions. The research questions are (1) How do schools in post-conflict areas experience pedagogical conflict, especially when confronting "difficult history" events that arise in classroom discussions? (2) How does the impacts caused? and (3) What solutions can be offered? This research paper is a qualitative research design with a phenomenological approach. The primary informants in this post-conflict generational research are teachers and students in East Aceh. Involved 55 participants from schools scattered in locations with predefined characteristics. The gender ratio was 69.6% females and 30.4% males. The youngest volunteer was 12 and the oldest was 52 of age. The main techniques used in the data collection was observation, which aims to observe the learning process in the classroom and various other potentials outside the… [PDF]
(2017). The United Nations, Peace, and Higher Education: Pedagogic Interventions in Neoliberal Times. Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies, v39 n3 p235-264. Peace and conflict studies (PACS) education in recent decades has become a popular approach to social justice learning in higher education institutions (Harris, Fisk, and Rank 1998; Smith 2007; Carstarphen et al. 2010; Bajaj and Hantzopoulos 2016) and has been provided legitimacy through a number of different United Nations (UN) declarations (UNESCO 1974, 1995; UN 2000, 2015). To explore and map the field of PACS, this article examines the intersections of higher education peace studies and UN-inspired peace and human rights education. The author designed an ethnographic case study to explore lecturers' understandings and enactments of peace teaching (Stake 1995; Denzin 1997; Yin 2003). The study involved participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 25 higher education peace scholars and 108 postgraduate students. The article first details the outcomes of the integrative and multilingual literature review, then outlines the university context and analytic tenets of… [Direct]
(2020). Creating Short-Term Classes on Unification in South Korean Universities. Asian Journal of University Education, v16 n1 p1-12 Apr. Young adults will be the next generation of leaders, and it is critical for them to be cognizant of major issues that impact society. Unification is a significant issue in South Korea, especially in light of the recent summits between South and North Korea. This study is rooted in principles of peace education to promote peaceful discourse related to unification issues. Unification education plays an important role in K-12 education in South Korea; however, it is not prioritized at the university level. This case study, which included open-ended surveys, interviews, and focus groups, explored South Korean university students' (n=33) views of creating short-term classes on unification and the types of topics that they think should be taught in these classes. Primary results indicate that most participants expressed interest in taking short-term classes on unification issues. The paper also includes practical implications that can be considered when developing short-term classes on… [PDF]
(2023). CSOs Working for Peace through Education in Conflict-Affected Areas: The Case of Cyprus. British Educational Research Journal, v49 n6 p1234-1253. This article discusses the results of a qualitative study examining the ways civil society organisations (CSOs) may better support grass-roots initiatives for everyday peacebuilding via education in conflict-affected societies, where official state processes have failed. Our research is set in the Cyprus context, where the conflict between the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities that has led to the division of the island seems rather 'intractable' and 'frozen'. From the process of the analysis, three thematic categories emerged: (a) cultivating citizen empowerment and civil initiatives; (b) enhancing children's and youth's voices; and (c) launching partnerships with state and societal actors. We discuss our findings under the framework of intercultural education and change. It is argued that for peacebuilding to flourish, CSOs should use education to cultivate social and sympathetic imagination by enabling people from both communities to imagine other, more socially just,… [Direct]
(2018). Education for Nonkilling Creativity: A Reconstructive-Empowering Approach. Journal of Peace Education, v15 n3 p309-324. Paige (2002) affirmed that a 'nonkilling society implies a disciplinary shift to nonkilling creativity'. Creativity is indispensable in the search for peaceful alternatives for the positive transformation of conflicts, inherent in human relationships. Creativity can help individuals to think and act peacefully, to find different alternatives to obstacles and problems, to face daily life challenges, and to be happier people. This article presents the Reconstructive-Empowering (REM) approach of peace education as a concrete proposal for implementing a nonkilling paradigm shift in education that facilitates the formation of a critical, active, creative, and peaceful nonkilling citizenship, capable of promoting social transformations toward a killing-free world…. [Direct]
(2021). Intercultural Computing Education: Toward Justice across Difference. ACM Transactions on Computing Education, v21 n4 Article 30 Dec. Even in the turn toward justice-oriented pedagogy, computing education tends to overlook the quality of intergroup relationships, which risks entrenching division. In this article, we establish an intercultural approach to computing education, informed by intercultural and peace education, prejudice reduction, and the sociology of racism and ethnicity. We outline three major concerns of intercultural computing: shifting from content toward relationships, from cultural responsiveness to cultural reflexivity, and from identity to identification. For the last, we complicate discourses of race and identity widespread in U.S. education. Drawing from studies of youth programming classes in East Africa and U.S. contexts, we then reflect on our attempts to address the first shift of fostering relationships across difference. We highlight three promising design tactics: intergroup pairing, interdependent programming, and making relational goals explicit. Overall, we find that computing can… [Direct]
(2014). Transformative Peace Education with Teachers: Lessons from "Juegos De Paz" in Rural Colombia. Journal of Peace Education, v11 n2 p150-161. Effective peace education helps to create a transformation in the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and relationships of its students. Drawing on their experiences training teachers as part of "Juegos de Paz," an education for peace program that received support from the Colombian National Program for Citizenship Competencies, the authors explore transformative peace education and identify four key lessons for practitioners. Data from focus groups, interviews, and personal reflections are used to illustrate these principles and lessons. Additionally, it is suggested that there may be some transferability of these principles across contexts, since the program studied was originally developed in North America for use in urban elementary schools and was successfully adapted for use in rural Colombia…. [Direct]
(2018). School Mining Clubs in Kono, Sierra Leone: The Practices and Imaginaries of a Pedagogy of Protest against Social Injustice in a Conflict-Affected Context. Globalisation, Societies and Education, v16 n4 p478-493. This paper takes as a case study the pedagogical practices emergent from the educational interventions of a civil society organisation in the conflict affected region of Kono, Sierra Leone. Using a cultural political economy approach, it highlights the possibilities of pedagogy being leveraged to protest against perceived and experienced social injustices. In so doing it contributes to understanding of a context-specific model of teacher agency, rooted in the local and global challenges faced by pupils and their communities. It thereby illuminates an alternative to the generic and decontextualized framings of pedagogy frequently offered in human rights and peace education curricula…. [Direct]
(2016). Educational Change Following Conflict: Challenges Related to the Implementation of a Peace Education Programme in Kenya. Journal of Educational Change, v17 n3 p319-336 Aug. Following the post-election violence in Kenya an attempt to bring about educational change through a peace education programme was launched by the MoE, UNICEF and UNHCR. The programme, which was aimed at building peace at the grassroots level, targeted the areas most affected by the post-election violence. Teaching plans were designed for all levels in primary school, and teachers and head teachers at schools in the Rift Valley were trained in the materials. Whereas the MoE assumed that the schools, having recently experienced the post-election violence, would have an innate motivation to implement the programme, this paper argues that the reality on the ground was more complicated. The formation and the implementation of the programme will be analysed from the perspective of policy makers and school populations. The paper argues that there are challenges related to additive and reactive peace education policies. Further, the paper argues that perceived relevance, school location,… [Direct]
(2017). A Qualitative Study of College-Based Peace Education Programs. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, University of Hartford. The purpose of this exploratory research study was to examine the perceptions of seven northeast United States, college-based, Peace Education program directors regarding their respective programs' characteristics and the challenges they face. This qualitative study was designed to fill a gap in the literature by examining the perceptions of university peace studies directors in order to better understand the organizations they operate, as well as aspects of their leadership that help them navigate the complexities of higher education. With Bolman and Deal's (2013) four frame model as a conceptual framework, the study used interviewing in a semi-structured format for data collection. Additional data was collected using the results of the Bolman and Deal's (1991) Leadership Orientations Survey completed by the program directors, as well as reviews of program websites.The findings indicated that program directors demonstrate strong communication skills, take great care to foster… [Direct]