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

Abstract

The Japanese word for crisis 危= 'danger' 機= 'opportunity' / critical moment. 1.0 Introduction It is hard to imagine anything more important than peace education, whether in conflictaffected areas or in countries that are free from open fighting (Sen, 2011, UNICEF, 2011), and yet the field, and its related research, faces substantial crises of legitimacy, representation and praxis. Some of these emanate from critiques of social science more generally, and some from the field of peace education itself. There are questions about what is meant by peace, about structural and cultural violence in educational institutions, and about the colonizing and hegemonic narratives that lurk beneath peace research and practice. These are potentially fatal to traditional concepts of research and evaluation (whose values?) research participants (participation in what?) and authorship (whose voice?). There are questions about whom peace educators speak for, and where they get their mandate. Equally, there are questions about how people's lives speak, and about what everyday choices say about lived attitudes towards peace. If peace education research is indeed facing a crisis, it might be useful to reflect on the fact that in many cultures the word crisis contains the notions of both danger and opportunity. The ideogram for 'crisis' in Japanese (shown at the top of this article) is an example of this, as is the Greek word 'κρίσις' which has the idea of a decision or turning point at its heart. Are peace education and peace education research in the twenty first century facing danger, or are they facing a turning point, a time for decision, and an opportunity for change? The current article is inspired by the work of Ilan Gur-Ze'ev. In 2011 he called for a systematic reflection on the conceptions and aims of peace education and peace education research. This was in response to philosophical challenges presented by post-structuralist philosophers. He was critical of attempts to achieve ethnocentric cohesion, urging instead a more fundamental review of what peace education might mean in these post-modern times.

Truth commissions, education, and positive peace: an analysis of truth commission final reports (1980–2015)

“…A number of studies argue for the potential for schools to instill a shared sense of identity (Tawil & Harley 2004), deepen awareness of and respect for human rights (Tibbitts & Fernekes 2010), and teach conflict-resolution and peacebuilding skills (Bickmore 2004). These studies have also established that educational reconstruction demands simultaneous attention to structural and curricular elements, arguing that peace education implemented within unchanged, inequitable structures risks preserving and reproducing conflict legacies, thus undermining transitional justice goals (Bellino 2016;Cremin 2015;Hammett & Staeheli 2013). Yet despite these more complex understandings of education, peace, and conflict interactions, there remains a lack of "sensitivity of reforms and programs to the legacies of past injustices in both the education sector and the public culture of a country" (Ramírez-Barat & Duthie 2017, 11).…”

“…In some reports, these calls were directed towards the general population, whereas in other cases they targeted particular sectors (often security and/or justice) implicated in directly committing or failing to prevent human rights violations. In common, however, was an apparent assumption by TCs the that audience for non-formal educational initiatives was an adult one, presumably since children and young people would be reached through the second Peace and human rights curricula have been criticized for being universalized and decontextualized (Cremin 2015;Horner 2013). Often peace education espouses a forward looking approach promising future peace that is not grounded in an understanding of the past and its legacies in the present.…”

The Case of Educational Peacebuilding Inside the United Nations Universities

“…The point is that critical pedagogy often favors mind-centric epistemologies. It is my position that greater attention to the biography of the body, emotion, and trauma in PACS education to transcend the field's rational limitations will open the possibility for other ways of knowing beyond the Western rational (Cremin, 2016;Dietrich, 2012;Dirkx, Mezirow, & Cranton, 2006).…”

“…It continues in part because there is a strong belief in the power of radical incremental change; the expectation is that changing people's everyday thinking can lay the basis for cumulative and systematic social change. While optimistic it is also a conflicted approach-that of downloading responsibility for social change onto individuals while at the same time raising awareness of structural determinism (Berger, 1974;Cremin, 2016;Gur Ze'ev, 2011;Pupavac, 2001). These aspersions point to the need for a critical review of the power of the multiplying effect in PACS education to contribute to actual institutional and social transformation, and it raises the question of how the field might reconcile educator and student agency with structural violence/transformation.…”

Perspectives of peaceful school on vocational school Students: A narrative research

“…The participants were taken from eleventh grade students, but only one class selected that is from Teknik Gambar Bangunan department (Building Image Engineering). The number of participants are 21 total students with 6 female studens and 15 male students (Cremin, 2015).…”