Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology © 2015 American Psychological Association

2015, Vol. 21, No. 3, 508 –514 1078-1919/15/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pac0000090

BRIEF REPORT

A Qualitative Approach to Identifying the Developmental

Progression of Children’s Understanding of Peace

Judith A. Myers-Walls Joellen Lewsader

Purdue University Central Michigan University
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

In order for children and adults to achieve peace, theories suggest that an under-
standing of peace is required. Few efforts have been made by previous researchers
to trace the developmental process and describe the unfolding of that understand-
ing. This qualitative study of 58 children ages 3 to 12 used drawings and semi-
structured interviews to identify themes in children’s descriptions of peace. Those
themes and understandings were then grouped into six levels that were interpreted
in light of Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of development and its later interpre-
tations. The levels are Preunderstanding, My Peace and Quiet, Sharing Peace with
Friends, Making Peace with Friends, Peace in my Communities, and World Peace.
Some developmental changes in children’s thinking appeared to be stagelike, others
showed gradual development, and still other components appeared to be
idiosyncratic.

Keywords: child development, peace, qualitative research, scaffolding, sociocultural theory

Peace has been a desired goal for humans
for millennia. In order for children and adults
to achieve peace, theorists suggest that under-
standing is required (e.g., Galtung, 1969;
Hakvoort & Oppenheimer, 1993). Although
peace is presented most often as an adult
issue, children are impacted by and know
something about peace (Raviv, Oppenheimer,
& Bar-Tal, 1999). Studies have suggested that
talking to children about peace-making strat-
egies reduces distress and increases optimism
(Cairns & Toner, 1993; Myers-Bowman,
Walker, & Myers-Walls, 2003; Raviv et al.,
1999).
To date, most studies related to children’s
understanding of peace have addressed two
issues: (a) what children understand about
peace, and (b) at what ages their understand-
ing develops. Few efforts have been made to
trace the developmental process of children
understanding peace.

This article was published Online First April 13, 2015.
JUDITH A. MYERS-WALLS holds a PhD and is a certified
family life educator and professor emerita in human devel-
opment and family studies at Purdue University. Her re-
search interests include parent– child communication about
difficult topics, parenting education, family life education
methodology, and cultural context of children and families.
JOELLEN LEWSADER holds a PhD and is an assistant pro-
fessor in human development and family studies at Central
Michigan University. Her research interests include strate-
gic evaluation of early childhood programs, quality child-
care, and parenting preschoolers and toddlers.
CORRESPONDENCE CONCERNING THIS ARTICLE should be
addressed to Judith A. Myers-Walls, Purdue University,
Department of Human Development and Family Studies,
West Lafayette, IN 47907. E-mail: jmyerswa@purdue.edu
508
Literature Review
Children’s Ages and Understanding
of Peace
Almost 50 years ago Cooper (1965) reported
that children as young as six years of age could
express ideas about war and peace, gaining
fairly coherent descriptions by age seven or
eight. Later, research by Ålvik (1968) supported
Cooper’s findings but looked at only 8- to 12-
year-old children. By the late 20th century,
scholars began to acknowledge earlier ages of
understanding among children (e.g., 4 years old;
 CHILDREN’S UNDERSTANDING OF PEACE
Hall, 1993). However, research has remained
limited; many scholars include only one age of
children in their studies and therefore cannot
reach any developmental conclusions (e.g., Op-
penheimer & Kuipers, 2003; Sunal, Kelley, &
Sunal, 2012).
Other studies found that different peace
themes were mentioned by different ages of
children. Yet other scholars have reported chil-
dren’s frame of reference broadening as chil-
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dren mature, with complete concepts of war and
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peace not developing until the age of 10 (Coo-
per, 1965; Hakvoort & Oppenheimer, 1993).
One limitation in summarizing these studies,
however, is the variability in defining
“younger” and “older” participants. Further-
more, none of these earlier studies tracked the
developmental path of children.
Theoretical Framework
The sociocultural theory of human develop-
ment as originally proposed by Vygotsky
(1934/1986) focuses on cognition as a process
of learning and experience. It is an individual
development theory that focuses on the individ-
ual within a cultural context (Herrenkohl, 2008;
Fleer, 2002). The mechanism of change, ac-
cording to sociocultural theory, includes a pro-
cess of internalization of cultural activities an
individual experiences with others (John-
Steiner & Mahn, 1996). When the activities
require solutions, shared experiences become a
joint problem-solving process through intersub-
jectivity or a shared understanding of the prob-
lem and its solutions (Fawcett & Garton, 2005;
Johnson-Pynn & Nisbet, 2002). Applying this
theory to children and their comprehension of
peace suggests children can perceive the impor-
tance of peace when the concept is brought into
their environment, further adapting this concept
into their worldview.
Research Questions
1. What is children’s understanding of
peace? Do children’s definitions focus on
the positive (what peace is) or negative
(what peace is not)?
2. How does children’s understanding de-
velop during the childhood years?
3. What progression can be identified in their
understanding? How does it change in
509
complexity and abstraction as children be-
come older?
Method
Participants
Data were collected at three time periods: in
the months after the attacks of September 11,
2001, in 2009 and 2010 during the Iraq and
Afghanistan wars, and shortly after the Kosovo
crisis in 1999. Studies have shown these differ-
ent political settings influence children’s com-
ments, but the combination of different time
periods may allow more general patterns to
emerge. Families with children aged 3 to 18
were recruited through child-serving institu-
tions and snowball sampling. All of the children
were residing and interviewed in the United
States Data from 58 children aged 3 to 12 (M ⫽
7.75 years) are included in this study. The sex
balance of the group was almost even, with 28
boys and 30 girls.
Measures
Children were first asked to draw pictures of
war and peace. They were then interviewed by
a trained female graduate student or professor
using a semistructured protocol. Drawings es-
tablish rapport and allow children to use a fa-
miliar, developmentally appropriate, and non-
threatening expressive tool (e.g., McLernon &
Cairns, 2001; Sunal et al., 2012; Walker, My-
ers-Bowman, & Myers-Walls, 2003). The ver-
bal interview included several questions related
to their drawings followed by open-ended ques-
tions about their definition and description of
war and peace. (Only peace is included here.)
Interviews were audio-recorded and later tran-
scribed verbatim.
Data Analysis
Qualitative data collection and analysis pro-
cedures permitted an in-depth examination of
the phenomena. Open-ended questions elicited
the participants’ own world views, and the in-
tentional lack of predetermined categories
added to the depth, openness, and detail of the
inquiry (Creswell, 2003). The initial step in-
volved content analysis of a subsample of the
interviews with each author individually read-
ing through children’s answers to get a sense of
 510 MYERS-WALLS AND LEWSADER
the data (Patton, 2002) and identify peace
themes—first individually and then jointly. The
next step was to arrange the same children’s
answers according to the children’s chronolog-
ical ages, using age as a proxy for developmen-
tal stage. Open coding (Patton, 2002) looked for
trends and themes associated with the age-based
arrangement. The authors identified six devel-
opmental levels in children’s developmental
progression in understanding peace—again, in-
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dividually and then jointly. Axial coding re-
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
duced and refined the themes. Finally, the au-
thors categorized each of the full sample of 58
children according to the developmental level
of his or her answers within the progression
without consideration of chronological age,
again doing so individually and then jointly
until consensus was reached.
Figure 1. Themes identified by children arranged by chronological order.
Results
The complete list of themes is presented in
Figure 1. Each child’s identified themes are
indicated in this figure by black cells. This chart
begins to answer the first research question.
Because the children are arranged according to
chronological age in Figure 1, it is possible to
recognize developmental trends and associa-
tions visually. This allowed for further explora-
tion of Research Questions 2 and 3.
Many of the themes in Figure 1 are similar to
concepts in the existing literature but are more
detailed, so it is unclear whether all of the
detailed themes that this study identified were
new or had simply been subsumed in other
categories previously. For example, Sleep and
Greeting/Politeness are not reported by previ-
 CHILDREN’S UNDERSTANDING OF PEACE
ous authors and could be newly identified
themes. Another is Fun/Celebration/Play. In a
sample answer, one 6-year-old boy described
peace by using all the holidays he could think
of:
“[Peace is] sharing, giving people some other things
like birthdays and Hanukah, Christmas too, fall and
Easter . . . I would say it’s about giving things like
Thanksgiving and having birthdays and presents and
other things like being nice.” (ID #7)
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Another child, an 8-year-old boy, drew a circus
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with people balancing on a ball and a tightrope
to represent peace (ID #45). These children
seemed to be connecting peace with active, fun,
and positive experiences.
We also found themes of Optimism/Peace
Never Ends, and Not Real/Can’t Happen; they
go beyond basic descriptions to an emotional
reaction to peace and the children’s assessment
of its likelihood. As one 9-year-old boy said in
response to the question of how peace ends:
“Sometimes it doesn’t.” (ID #46). In a similar
vein, an 11-year-old boy answered: “Well, if it
starts well, then it shouldn’t end” (ID #16). On
the other hand, some children were skeptical
about whether peace was possible. As a 9-year-
old girl described peace, “It’s kind of a won-
derful world that doesn’t really happen . . . It
doesn’t have violence. It doesn’t really happen
like that” (ID #14).
Our Knowledge theme suggested that peace
was something a person could learn, that it
required thought, and it was important to teach
about peace to others. As an 11-year-old boy
put it, “[in peace] everyone can pretty much
figure things out without war” (ID #17). An
11-year-old girl said peace starts “by a group of
people trying to make the world a better place
and helping people, like, understand it more”
(ID #55).
The final unique theme we found was Com-
munication. As one 8-year-old boy described
peace, “You don’t fight. You just argue some-
times or you talk it out or sometimes you yell it
out” (ID #45). For that child, a variety of types
of communication counted as peaceful; the
common denominator was using words instead
of fighting.
To answer Research Question 3, the trends
and associations found from the developmental
analysis of the children’s themes were grouped
into six levels These levels are described in
511
Table 1 along with ranges and means of ob-
served ages, a description of the themes in-
cluded by children at that level, the range and
mean number of themes identified in individual
answers, and some illustrative quotes from chil-
dren at that level.
Discussion
Findings from this study show children’s de-
velopment of conceptualizations of peace is not
strictly connected to age, as seen in the overlap
of ages across levels in the progression. Ob-
served trends suggest some stagelike shifts in
how children view peace. That is, children seem
in some cases to change the way they view
peace in a substantive way, and once that
change occurs, it remains. For example, in
Level 2 many children described peace as sleep-
ing, being quiet, and being alone. Those refer-
ences disappeared after Level 2, although a few
children referred to quiet again in later stages,
but suggested a growing awareness of inner
peace and tranquility. It is interesting to note
that some older children said that peace meant a
person would not need to be alone, in direct
contrast with the children in Level 2. In a final
stagelike shift, negative descriptions, what
peace is not, did not appear until Level 3, but
once they appeared they became a regular fea-
ture in the children’s descriptions.
Another trend in the developmental progres-
sion reflects a gradual realization and unfolding
of some concepts. Changes in the numbers of
themes at each level also suggest that the com-
plexity of their answers increased as they aged
and moved through levels. Of note, however,
the number of identified themes plateaued and
even declined in the later stages, showing a
growing understanding of peace that eventually
became parsimonious as they refined their un-
derstanding in Level 6. These changes are con-
sistent with a sociocultural theoretical frame-
work.
Finally, some of the themes did not vary in
any noticeable way by age or developmental
level. For example, religious references were
made by some children in almost all levels of
the progression, and those references did not
decrease or increase with age. The same is true
of references to nature, love, and symbols. It
seems that some orientations are related to fam-
ily, individual orientation, or immediate envi-
 512 MYERS-WALLS AND LEWSADER
Table 1
Developmental Progression of Understanding Peace
Observed
Number Level ages Concepts and trends
1 Preunderstanding 3–5 No understanding;
n⫽6 M ⫽ 4.00 misunderstanding
2 My Peace and 3–8 Egocentricity; immediate and
n⫽9 Quiet M ⫽ 5.22 personal experiences; peace is
positive and good; references
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to quiet, sleep, and being
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alone; happiness; love;
drawings important to helping
children express ideas; use
symbols without
understanding symbolism;
mention few or no
interactions
3 Sharing Peace 4–9 Peace becomes interpersonal—
n ⫽ 14 With Friends M ⫽ 6.64 mostly one-on-one; actions
like playing and sharing;
happiness; negative peace—
what it is not—starts to
appear; acting on a friend’s
perspective; still egocentric
and external locus of control
4 Making Peace 6–10 Interpersonal references widen
n⫽7 With Friends M ⫽ 7.71 to groups of friends but still
immediate relationships; more
actions; negative descriptions
become more common; an
early sense of personal
empowerment to make peace;
start to talk about how their
actions affect others
5 Peace in My 7–12 Interpersonal references broaden
n ⫽ 16 Communities M ⫽ 9.88 to communities and people
they don’t know; some
abstract concepts; empathy
with more distant people;
peaceful is not always
perfect; peace means not
being alone; the ripple effect
of one person starting trends;
knowledge; communication
6 World Peace 9–11 Universal or global references
n⫽6 M ⫽ 10.50 begin; emotions; causality
and impacts of peace;
communication skills;
considerable empowerment to
make things happen; internal
locus of control; create
symbols and describe them in
a symbolic way
Number of
themes Sample answers
1–2 “I don’t know.”
M ⫽ 1.17 Drew a picture of peas.
“Piece of pizza. Has a
million pieces”
1–4 Drawing: a face with
M ⫽ 2.11 peace signs for eyes
and defined peace as,
“Some lines and then a
circle. Different colors
and circle.”
Drawing: a cot with a
child and many Zs. He
said, “Peace is when
you are sleeping.”
1–7 Peace is “love and
M ⫽ 3.43 sharing.”
“Peace looks kind of like
this. By giving each
other stuff.”
3–7 Peace “causes love, joy,
M ⫽ 5.14 happiness, peace.”
“In peace everyone starts
loving and giving away
hugs and loving hugs.”
3–10 “After you’ve done
M ⫽ 7.25 something bad to
somebody, you . . .
start to forgive them
and to say forgive and
bring them together.”
“Somebody feels happy
and it spreads to all the
people that they meet.”
3–8 “Friends are made. People
M ⫽ 5.83 don’t have to worry
about getting forced to
go to war and they can
just relax and do their
daily things.”
“All getting along and
sharing. All being
informed, I guess.”
 CHILDREN’S UNDERSTANDING OF PEACE
ronment rather than to the child’s developmen-
tal level.
We found both familiar themes in the chil-
dren’s answers as well as new themes not pre-
viously published. Our expanded number of
themes may be attributable in part to the qual-
itative analysis that avoided axial coding until
the final steps. This approach allowed for more
detailed, nuanced reporting of children’s con-
ceptualizations. Avoiding the use of a priori
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categories also allowed unique and child-
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centered themes to emerge.
New findings in this study differed in several
ways from earlier research. First, children in
this study provided some level of conceptual-
ization of peace at younger ages than previously
reported. While previous reports show children
being unable to describe peace until age 6, 8, or
10, children as young as three years old in this
study were able to talk about peace from their
own perspective. One possible reason for these
new results is that this study purposefully in-
cluded children as young as three in the sample.
Additionally, the child-friendly methods used to
conduct the interviews may have helped the
children focus concretely on the often abstract
concept of peace. Finally, many previous stud-
ies are between 10 and 50 years old; therefore,
it is possible that children in recent years have
more open exposure to concepts of war and
peace within their environments.
Findings in Light of Developmental Theory
Children’s receptive language develops be-
fore their expressive language. In the same way,
children in this study seemed to understand
some aspects of peace before they were able to
connect that understanding to language. At
Level 1 of our progression, some children
matched sound-alike words like “peas” and
“pieces” with “peace,” but by Level 2 most
children had expanded their vocabularies and
linked the word “peace” to other terms like
“quiet” and “being alone.” Vygotsky placed
children’s learning in the context of the sur-
rounding environment, which is limited to im-
mediate relationships at the earliest stages. As
children age, the scope of the children’s an-
swers generally expanded with their surround-
ing environments.
513
Limitations
The sample size of 58 children provided a
strong base for a qualitative study, but a larger
number of children would have allowed for
more diversity of answers and a greater number
of children at each developmental level. Addi-
tionally, this sample was comprised of children
from the United States only; therefore, future
studies based in other countries will provide a
more complete view of commonalities across
cultures. Furthermore, this study included a
cross-sectional sample of children across the
age span from 3 to 12 years of age. A longitu-
dinal study following children over time would
allow researchers to observe the unfolding of
these cognitive processes. A final improvement
that future studies could make is to assess reli-
ability of independent coders. Because this
study identified new developmental levels and
the progression of understanding rather than
categorization of children into specific develop-
mental levels, our focus was on consensus
among coders. Future research could focus on
the refinement of categorization.
Implications for Research
As shown by this study, the use of drawings
in conjunction with verbal interviews allowed
even very young children to participate in and
contribute to the investigation. In the future it
would be helpful to include the drawings them-
selves in the analysis as well and not only the
children’s descriptions of them. Using the same
methodology with all of the children through
age 12 facilitated aggregation of results and
allowed us to focus on developmental stages
rather than chronological ages.
We restricted our study to children’s concep-
tions of peace, but it will be important for future
studies to examine parallel questions on chil-
dren’s conceptions of war or violence. It also
will be important to carry the examination of the
developmental progression of peace-under-
standing beyond age 12. In addition, it will be
important to look at children in other cultures
and in response to different international events
to identify whether the progression of develop-
mental levels is robust across cultures, coun-
tries, and current events. Replications with ad-
ditional and larger samples will help to confirm
or refine our findings. Finally, future studies
 514 MYERS-WALLS AND LEWSADER
could look at other components of the sociocul-
tural environment, such as parents and teachers.
Conclusion
Children are crucial to the process of estab-
lishing peace in the world, but information
about their understanding of the concept of
peace has been limited. The results of this study
help to provide a pathway and agenda to support
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children in their growing awareness of peace
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and nonviolence. This awareness can then be
nurtured to become a sense of empowerment
and the ability to help the world reach the elu-
sive goal of living in peace.
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