Running head: PEACE EDUCATION 1

Peace Education

Danielle McAndrew

EDUC 746 Conflict Resolution

PEACE EDUCATION 2

Abstract

To prevent continued cycles of violence, education must seek to promote peace and tolerance, at

home and abroad with the help of all stake holders to help young students deal with conflict

nonviolently and appropriately. Peace education is the process of acquiring the values, the

knowledge and developing the attitudes, skills, and behaviors to live in harmony with oneself,

with others, and with the natural environment. Teaching peace education is not an easy task to

accomplish. Peace education can help students acquire the necessary skills for living and

working in harmony. The success of doing it relies heavily on the content and the process of

teaching it.

Key Words
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Peace Education

Having a school environment that strives for peace, living in unity, and having the values

to avoid conflict should be imbedded in all curriculums and not just part of a hidden curriculum.

Peace education can help students acquire the necessary skills for living and working in

harmony. This paper explores peace education, defines several terms related to peace education,

and views the historical background. In addition, this paper will discuss the importance of having

a plan for implementation on peace education as well as recommendations. To prevent continued

cycles of violence, education must seek to promote peace and tolerance, at home and abroad with

the help of all stake holders to help young students deal with conflict nonviolently and

appropriately.

Definitions

Peace education is the process of acquiring the values, the knowledge and developing the

attitudes, skills, and behaviors to live in harmony with oneself, with others, and with the natural

environment (Lauritzen, 2016).

Peace, according to Singh (2017), states that peace is defined as a freedom from conflict,

war, and other disruptions.

According to Barkly (2016) restorative justice (RJ) is an umbrella term for a method of

handling disputes with its roots in the rituals of indigenous populations and traditional religious

practices. It seeks to offer justice to the individual victim, the offender, and the community, all of

whom have been harmed by a crime or other form of wrong doing.

History of Peace Education

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The start of Peace education can be traced back to enlighten thinkers Immanuel Kant and

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Tinker & Azimuth, 2016). Although not called peace education they

viewed humanitarian concerns and equal rights of all citizens (Tinker & Azimuth, 2016). Studies

on peace are a relative new formal academic study, but the study of military and war dates back

millenniums. Movements such as civil rights and antiwar movements brought about the idea of

peace education to assist people to working together and getting along in this world and lead to

formal theories and practices in education (Tinker & Azimuth, 2016). Additionally, in 2013, the

United Nations held an annual International Day of Peace that focused on Peace Education,

which in my opinion is where it started to get notoriety in the United States.

Importance of Peace Education

Education needs to promote peace and prevent cycles of violence. There needs to be

Peace Education to teach tolerance and help students to move away from violence and chaos in a

creative and productive way. Peace education is important to establish in a school district and

present in a curriculum because it represents a type of culture and behavior that schools should

follow. Grau, García-Raga & López-Martín, (2016) examine the importance of peace education

and teaching co-existence. Coexistence programs work and should be used. Implementation of

coexistence improvement programs shaped by putting into practice a variety of peer support

strategies contributed to improve both the atmosphere at the center as a whole, and that existing

in each specific classroom.

Countries affected by Peace Education

There are various examples of war torn countries that have implemented Peace Education

strategies in their countries to help war torn communities to rebuild and to problem solve as well

as educate their students in problem solving techniques to curb the cycle of violence. All of these
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countries provide different case studies and examples for effectiveness of peace education from

conflict resolution to war torn lands. The first example is peace education in Jamacia.

According to Ferguson and Chevannes (2018), childhood bullying is a breach to public

health issues and human rights. The phenomenon has warranted research attention in developed

societies and shown to have serious short- and long-term implications for individuals, families,

and society. Due to bullying there has been an increase in children’s mental health issues. The

evidence indicated that there was a clear need for anti-bullying education and peace education

programs to expose children to the consequences of these actions (Ferguson & Chevannes,

2018). Through theoretical and data driven peace education Ferguson & Chevannes (2018),

determined that the introduction to this type of education reduced bullying in schools, and

perhaps ultimately had a wider affect to outside of school.

In Israel, a study done at the university level examined the benefits on peace education.

Gross (2017), examines how Palestinian Arab and Jewish university students in Israel, attending

a course on conflict resolution, deal with their stereotypical views of the other and their

prejudices, as well as their complex emotions of fear, hate, anxiety, and love during a period of

tension and violence. Living in a war-torn country effected their ability to think logically about

professional relationships with other students since acts of terrorism occur almost daily. This

violence changes the power structure and the dynamics of their mutual relationships (Gross,

2017). In this case study Gross (2017), demonstrated that through peace education you can use a

bridging theory and practice to generate a better understanding of complex situations, enabling

reflection and developing signposts to improve coping mechanisms within peace education

frameworks in times of terror. Gross (2017), determined that peace education was effective at the

university level, and argued that the benefits outweigh any other types of conflict resolution.
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Solvor Mjøberg (2016), completed a study on peace education in Kenya following the

post-election violence. The program was designed to bring educational change through peace

education provided by MoE, UNICEF and UNHCR (Solvor Mjøberg, 2016). The program,

aimed at building peace at the grassroots level, focused on the most violent area, Teaching plans

were written for primary school level and all teachers in the Rift Valley were properly trained in

the material (Solvor Mjøberg, 2016). According to Solvor Mjøberg (2016), the top-down

approach taken when designing and implementing the program led to less impact than the

program otherwise could have had, due to the lack of adjustment to local school contexts.

Therefore, there is a better approach needed to implement peace education.

Jimlan (2017) conducted a study on the effects of peace education in the Philippines.

According to Jimlan (2017), the consequences of war are devastating particularly to civilians

taking their security and preventing them from achieving full self-realization. The resulting

insecurity and instability that follows from these circumstances. According to Jimlan (2017)

however, it is through these situations that we get a better of understanding of how countries are

affected by war and what type of policies are effective. Through any type of reoccurring issues

there needs to be a new way to look at it that does not disregard cultural sensitivity (Jimlan,

2017). The absence of certainty and security makes it difficult to promote peace, and local peace

workers are confronted daily with these variables in the field, however peace education programs

are required to help solve these issues (Jimlan, 2017).

Tuntivivat (2016), examined violence in Thailand. The study reveals some

misconceptions of violence, normalization of direct violence in armed conflict, and pinpoints the

ways in which cultural violence is used to legitimize structural and direct violence in the

education system, as well as adverse effects and ethno-religious segregation in schools and the
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larger society (Tuntivivat, 2016). Some policy recommendations such as peace education and

other conflict resolution techniques are recommended (Tuntivivat, 2016). The study determines

there is a clear relationship between education and violence and adverse effects on violence in

the education system in the midst of armed conflict in Southern Thailand and there needs to be

clear policies established to combat this issue (Tuntivivat, 2016).

In Louisiana, United States Shaw, (2017) developed a new study about the benefits of

creating a peace education program. Shaw (2017) argues for more support for creative, long-term

approaches that test theories of change and are rooted in conflict analysis, sound evaluation

plans, and indigenous approaches to peacebuilding in the classroom. Peace education, which

effectively incorporates other approaches that focus on the psycho-cultural, structural, and

institutional dimensions of conflict (Shaw, 2017). The evolution of peace education reflects input

from numerous disciplines, forms of pedagogy, and underlying theories of conflict (Shaw, 2017).

The main areas of related work include developing instructional content, preparing teachers,

pursuing the structural and policy changes required to mainstream peace education, promoting

initiatives at the community level, and engaging in public awareness campaigns (Shaw, 2017).

Implementation

There are some clear focuses on peace education that needs to be focused on. To

implement an effective peace education curriculum the focus needs to be on conflict resolution

techniques, violence prevention education, and non-violence education (Ferguson & Chevannes,

2018). These skills constitute its content as they are imperative to create peace at different levels

of human relationship. The first step is to provide students the capability and values they must

have to build and sustain peace in their respective families, friends, community, workplace,

country, world, and within themselves. Ferguson & Chevannes (2018), created the circles
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program, where strategies are being used in conflict management education to use problem-

solving, conflict resolution, communications and other skills to engaged in lifelong learning, and

learn to reflect on and interrogate underlying assumptions and preconceived notions about

themselves and each other, the roles they themselves might play in contributing to conflict.

Another implementation function is to constructively handle the after-effects of war or conflict

and presence of violence in individuals’ daily lives like increased violence and aggression. Next

to develop social responsibility which is needed in current times to provide hope for a better

future for the younger members of society and to build a better place to live. The last focus for

implementation is to value the richness of the philosophy and concept of peace as a process, to

understand war behavior, to promote a concept of peace accompanied by social justice, and to

stimulate a respect for life by managing conflicts nonviolently.

Teacher Education Programs

Teaching peace education is not easy task to accomplish. There needs to be classes and

presentations provided for teachers in proper content knowledge. The success of doing it relies

heavily on the content and the process of teaching it. The first basic components in teaching

peace education is to focus on universal values and attitudes. These include human rights,

democracy, cooperation, prevention, culture, and protection. Novick (2015) provides essentials

for teachers to teach peace education. If peace education must be successful, the recommended

approaches and methodologies to teach the subject as follows: 1. Cooperative and Collaborative

Learning. 2. Critical Pedagogy. 3. Inquiry Methodology or Problem Solving. 4. Emphasis on

Conceptual Frameworks. 5. Conflict Analysis and Responses. 6. Civil Society Participation

(Novick, 2015).
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Jimlan (2017) said that to improve the performance of school principals conflict

management and transformational leadership skills the "Heart-Centered Management Training

Program" was used to improve and enhanced use of emotional intelligence, conflict management

styles and transformational leadership skills. The school principal is the person responsible for

the overall management and learning in a school and a heart-centered management as an urgent

and integral approach to educational management in which the leader strives to encourage a

sense of significance and interconnectedness among employees by focusing on the whole person.

Conclusion

Teaching peace education is not an easy task to accomplish. Peace education can help

students acquire the necessary skills for living and working in harmony. The success of doing it

relies heavily on the content and the process of teaching it. Peace education addresses one of the

most difficult human dilemmas. To prevent continued cycles of violence, education must seek to

promote peace and tolerance, at home and abroad with the help of all stake holders to help young

students deal with conflict nonviolently and appropriately. Peace educators have created

academic content, practical skills, and peaceful pedagogies that could help the citizens of the

world produce peace. Despite these efforts, not all schools and colleges embrace the study of

peace but should.

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