In this presentation, Visualising Peace student Joe Walker discusses some of the scholarship he has been reading on peace education. He looks particularly at emotional (as opposed to cognitive) approaches to peace education, and reflects on the use of auto ethnography and the theory of ‘transrationality’ in teaching practices. Below the video, you can find a summary of the publications he discusses. These are also available in our Visualising Peace Library.
Kester, K., Archer, T., & Bryant, S. (2019). Diffraction, transrational perspectives, and peace education: new possibilities. Journal of Peace Education, 16(3), 274-295.
This article on peace education emphasises the emotional element of learning, using the work of two foundational peace education scholars, Paulo Freire and Betty Reardon, and two contemporary researchers, Wolfgang Dietrich and Hilary Cremin. Specifically, it examines how the emotional approach to learning about peace has developed in the discipline.
The merit of this piece is in explaining the importance of the work of Freire and Reardon in establishing the relationship between education and hierarchies of power, and the gendered dimension of these hierarchies. The authors then continue through discussing two current scholars, Wolfgang Dietrich and Hilary Cremin, who explicitly centre the emotional dimension of peace education in their work through the theory of transrationality, a concept conceived by Dietrich to combine more traditional definitions of peace that are focused on rational fact, with elements of spiritual and emotional depth that better encompasses the various aspects of what it means to be human. The work of Cremin is then cited in its use of transrationality in attempting to solve the current issues facing peace education, chiefly in its legitimation, representation, and praxis.
This work allows one to make a connection between important scholars in the field of peace education and trace the turn towards emotion and transrationality in the discipline. It is similar to other pieces in the library, such as “Transrational Peacebuilding Education to Reduce Epistemic Violence”, which is co-authored by Kester with Cremin herself.
Standish, K., & Joyce, J. (2016). Looking for Peace in the National Curriculum of Scotland. Peace Research, 48(1/2), 67-90
This piece specifically focuses on the Curriculum for Excellence, the Scottish national curriculum for 4–18-year-olds. It analyses the curriculum using a method devised by the PECA project, an institution that studies global curricula in order to find baseline levels of peace education. The method divides peace education into three categories: nonviolent conflict transformation; recognition of violence; and positive peace, and the article uses these concepts to investigate the ways in which the Curriculum for Excellence both succeeds and fails in advancing Peace Education according to these criteria.
The article finds that there are some elements of peace education, such as collaboration and dialogue, that are well represented in the curriculum, especially communication in group work. Aspects of wellbeing are also present, both related explicitly to physical and mental health, but also in connection with other aspects of peace such as social justice. However, other elements, such as prevention, environment, and gender are rarely represented or missing completely from the curriculum, although the piece could go further in attempting to explain these absences.
This source is useful as a detailed analysis of the Curriculum for Excellence, but it also provides a theoretical method for analysing other curricula and systems of education.
Carter, C. C., & Vandeyar, S. (2009). Teacher Preparation for Peace Education in South Africa and the United States. In C. McGlynn, M. Zembylas, Z. Bekerman, & T. Gallagher (Eds.), Peace Education in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies: Comparative Perspectives (pp. 247-261). Palgrave Macmillan US
This article compares pre-teacher training for peace education in South Africa and the southern United States. The piece details the transformative pedagogy that these schemes have used to approach peace education, which challenges the dominant understandings of power inside and outside of the classroom and seeks to use education to change how peace is visualised by the teachers-in-training. The difficulties with this method of training are also discussed, particularly the professional constraints that individual teaching instructors faced in implementing the programme.
The article begins by discussing the concept of education for peace, which views peace education not just as the study of peace treaties and nonviolence, but also the competencies and values that contribute to a peaceful and just society. Then, in explaining the difficulties that teaching instructors face, the piece highlights the need for individual courage in the face of student challenges and personal professional pressures. Finally, the article compares the pilot programmes run in South Africa and the United States, noting how the more recent racial integration in the history of South Africa made it more difficult for the instructor to teach education for peace.
This article provides useful context for the difficulties in introducing new teacher training initiatives into racially fractured societies, and also serves as an example of a more expansive visualisation of peace in action.
Cremin, H. (2018). An autoethnography of a peace educator: Deepening reflections on research, practice and the field. Emotion, Space and Society, 28, 1-8.
This piece by Hilary Cremin, a well-known scholar in the field of Peace Education, is an autoethnography that combines academic prose with poetry and autobiography, as a recognition of the multiple selves that an academic inhabits.
The article begins by discussing the merits of autoethnographic work, with Cremin linking the writing style to her transrational approach to peace education, which combines a factual normative understanding of peace with emotional and spiritual elements as a recognition that humans are more than their rationality. Cremin then takes the reader through various aspects of her professional career and personal life, using anecdotes to illustrate the development of her transrational approach and the influence of her Quaker faith and prior experiences as an educator on her academic work. Finally, Cremin details the poem that she wrote to make sense of her place in the field of peace education and the potential of the classroom environment to transgress physical boundaries and hierarchies and become a positive space for change.
This work has a great effect on one as a reader: it opens the mind to the limitations of purely academic literature, especially when that style of writing is at odds with the argument that the author is making; if the writer believes that rationality is only one facet of the human experience, then perhaps their work should also reflect this reality?