Teaching Peace and War

Pedagogy and Curricula

Annick T.R. Wibben, Amanda E. Donahoe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000053753
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Curricula

This comprehensive volume on teaching peace and war demonstrates that our choice of pedagogy, or the way we structure a curriculum, must be attentive to context. Pedagogical strategies that work with one class may not work in another, whether over time or across space and different types of institutions, regardless of the field of study. This book offers insight on how to address these issues. The chapters contain valuable information on specific lessons learned and creative pedagogies developed, as well as exercises and tools that facilitate delivery in specific classrooms. The authors address a wide range of challenges related to broader questions on what teachers are trying to achieve when teaching about peace and war, including reflections on the teacher's role as a facilitator of knowledge creation.

This collection offers a valuable reference for scholars and instructors on structuring peace and war curricula in different global contexts and pedagogical strategies for a variety of classrooms.

The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal Peace Review.

Peace and War in the Classroom

AMANDA E. DONAHOE AND ANNICK T.R. WIBBEN

 

 

 

“If the purpose of teaching about war is to understand the past in order to prevent repetition in the future, the purpose of teaching peace is to create that future”

These are the words of Ronni Alexander whose essay, part of a pair of Peace Review special issues on Teaching Peace and War, is also included here. When we put out the call for submissions to a special issue of Peace Review on teaching about peace and war in summer 2017, we never dreamed of receiving 70 essays. As scholars deeply concerned with pedagogy, we were excited to receive them—clearly the topic hit a nerve. Consequently, we were lucky enough to be able to edit not one, but two special issues on teaching and curricular issues: Volume 30, issue 1 (January–March 2018) and Volume 30, issue 3 (July–September 2018). This book represents the collection of essays from both issues.

Across the essays in these two special issues a key theme emerged: Teaching peace and war, whether in choice of pedagogy or in structuring a curriculum, must be attentive to context. This seems obvious, perhaps. Teaching is always contextual. Pedagogical strategies that work with one class may not in another, whether over time or across space and different types of institutions, regardless of the field of study. The essays collected here make this abundantly clear, but they also offer much insight on how to address small and large issues. When you peruse these essays, you will find much valuable information on specific lessons learned, and creative pedagogies developed, as well as exercises and tools created that facilitate delivery in our specific classrooms. At the same time, you will see scholars grappling with a wide range of challenges related to broader questions on what it is we are trying to achieve when teaching about peace and war, including reflections on the teacher’s role as a facilitator of knowledge creation.

Those of us who teach about peace and war do so from a variety of perspectives—as scholars and practitioners we draw on a wide range of global frames and academic disciplines, some more concerned with understanding (and even developing strategies for) war, others steeped in efforts to build and maintain peace. While many of the contributors to this collection broadly identify with peace and conflict studies (itself a varied and interdisciplinary field as it draws on political science, history, geography, sociology, and education among others), we have also tried to include others who have important contributions to make, specifically outside of the Anglo-American context which tends to dominate in this field. While it can be a challenge to teach about peace and war without a unified body of foundational literature to draw on, we believe that this is also a strength if we commit to a purposeful awareness and expectation of inclusivity, both theoretically in terms of these varied fields of study and methodologically as a counter to various kinds of exclusion that often drive conflict.

The organization of the book largely follows that of the special issues. Part I is on pedagogy and focuses specifically on classroom strategies but also asks us to consider some broader themes applicable beyond the teaching of peace and war: Do you present knowledge as settled or up for debate? Do you engage students in the construction of knowledge, maybe emphasizing their local/indigenous knowledges and prior experiences? How might a teacher use practical exercises and new technologies in class and creatively engage materials to defamiliarize accepted wisdom and inspire new insights? Each essay in this collection is a treasure-trove of knowledge—some specifically develop new assignments, others make creative use of new technologies, yet others emphasize experiential knowledge and links to activism.

Part I starts with Bejtullahu, Kunz & Stoicescu’s essay on podcasting which argues that such a creative assignment encourages students to develop a “more attentive examination of [the class’] content and the development of academic responsibility toward it” and Alexander’s description of the ways in which the fictional character Popoki can help inspire deeper thinking about what peace means by “incorporating art-making and the use of our senses, emotions, and bodies along with our intellect”. In day-long sessions for part-time students in South Africa, John flips the classroom in a multi-stage conflict mapping project that engages students in a collaborative classroom environment. Kaye & Harris reach beyond the academic world in their adoption of (participatory) action research in working with doctoral students across the African continent. Like Alexander, Kaye & Harris emphasize the “community as participants and direct beneficiaries”, noting that this allows newly created knowledge to be directly relevant to communities and, hopefully, to promote more immediate change than traditional academic research.

In their essay, Dayal & Musgrave take on the idea that we can teach specific “lessons of history” and suggest we might instead focus on “guiding students to the recognition that some questions are unanswerable”. They suggest that a focus on counterfactuals, uncertainty and unintended consequences, while also specifically addressing students’ ethical concerns, better serves to convey the complexity, e.g. of decisions to intervene (or not). Berndtsson & Wackenhut offer another approach to the challenge of teaching emotionally and ethically different knowledge about violence/war: Using the My Lai massacre as their case, they develop a comprehensive exercise that involves original documents with conflicting accounts that the students are asked to analyze, research further and eventually present. In the process of participating in the exercise, the students not only learn key skills, the exercise also underlines “the difficulties of arriving at a single and ‘true’ narrative” of any event.

Finally, Tatlock & Reiter use extensive role play to teach historical knowledge and, at the same time, help students hone key skills such as empathy, critical listening, and argumentation. Similarly, Donahoe makes creative use of group work to not just teach about conflict resolution, but to apply conflict management techniques in the group activities themselves. Schwarz, meanwhile, encourages students to reflect on their preconceived notions of the relationship between religion and politics in general as well as of religious traditions as monolithic and unchanging. Each of these essays emphasizes the importance of teaching students reflexivity—both teachers and scholars need to become aware of prejudgements we bring to a particular topic and acknowledge our varied positionality as Wibben has elsewhere noted.

Part II focuses on peace and war (studies) curricula. It starts by drawing attention to standards of import and how they continue to change. This discussion is followed by contributions that focus on the tension between curriculum standards and bottom-up contextual teaching. Whether in Iraqi Kurdistan, Pakistan, various African cases or even the United Nations universities, the authors wrestle with the difficulties of addressing local needs and contexts when faced with established scholarship that is often received as a Western imposition. This problem of translating global standards in the implementation of curricula presents an opportunity to critically engage the intersection of global and local—whose perspective should be prioritized? To what end? The final set of essays consider the ways in which attention to, as well as an explicit embrace of, positionality in the classroom can contribute positively to the normative endeavor of teaching peace and war. In addition to offering critical assessments, many of the essays in these pages offer practical applications and innovative ways forward.

There are varied lessons to be learned in the experiences our colleagues share: Practically applying the ideal of inclusion is a key challenge in the field. For example, as Ahmed discusses, Pakistan’s education system is characterized by a three-tier educational system in which a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching peace cannot succeed. Chirambwi is similarly critical of ready-made frameworks for teaching peace in various African states where high dropout rates and increasing levels of student-trauma present specific challenges to education broadly and peace education directly, especially as it is delivered by soldiers as peace educators. Finnegan et al. suggest that inserting or immersing students into the experiences of marginalized people can help ground students in contextual learning. Teaching peace and war, as Rivera-Clonch argues, should be both systemic and contextual, empowering local knowledges and drawing on local wisdom. In the classroom we can draw on both the diversity of the students’ knowledges and on our own experiences to contribute to these processes.

Critical thinking is imperative to the learning process, particularly as Braatz points out, when students are often taught war-worship, as Wibben et al. note in their recent reflection on Feminist Peace Research. Instead, students should be encouraged to question whether something is true; how we know it is true; why the story is important; and what and where the silences are. Darweish & Mohammed, Cremin, Echavarría & Kester, and Braatz are all particularly concerned with the issue of nationalism and the ways in which national narratives go unchallenged. Critical pedagogies are a necessary process in deconstructing the myths that promote the status quo. Hiller suggests that two particularly destructive and dominant myths in this field are that violent conflict is natural and that peace is weakness and naivete. At the same time, recognizing the limitations and weaknesses of various peace processes is an important component of critical pedagogy. As Holmes addresses, such pedagogy disrupts repressive knowledge claims in the classroom—she and others acknowledge Paolo Freire as foundational to teaching this field.

A final motif is teacher subjectivity. Teaching peace and war is inherently a normative endeavor. Chirambwi argues that “the content of peace education reflects positionality, crystallization and solidification of political affiliation”. We cannot help but bring our own norms into the classroom whether, as Lambelet discusses, we stand up and take responsibility for our own commitments or sit down and facilitate our students taking responsibility for theirs. Recognizing that we (students and teachers) arrive in the classroom with prior experience and varied training and that we work within the limits of particular contexts, if acknowledged and specifically addressed should be considered a strength rather than a weakness because it makes us better teachers (and scholars).

In the final essay of this collection, Klein, Finnegan & Nelson-Pallmeyer promote a Circle of Praxis pedagogy; a purposeful and iterative process of insertion, descriptive analysis, normative analysis and action planning. This call to conscientious structure both within the classroom and across the curriculum promotes transformative education. Like the other essays in this collection, theirs offers a great deal of practical wisdom from colleagues in a variety of fields and a variety of spaces under the umbrella of peace and conflict studies.

We should also note that the essays in this volume represent less than a third of the collection of essays that were submitted to this project; our colleagues are truly doing amazing work. As we see it, these essays offer an invitation to engage in an ongoing conversation about the ways in which we can teach and facilitate learning in our classrooms. This project has been particularly rewarding for us—we have enjoyed learning from the essays here and the wider pool of essays submitted in response to our call. We have learned specific strategies that we are already implementing in our classrooms and much more that we look forward to applying in the future. We hope that you will find these essays similarly challenging and inspiring.

REFERENCES

Wibben, Annick T.R. (Ed.) 2016. Researching War: Feminist Methods, Ethics & Politics. London & New York: Routledge.

Wibben, Annick T.R., Catia Confortini, Sarai Aharoni, Sanam Roohi, Leena Vastapuu & Tiina Vaittinen. 2018. Collective Discussion: Piecing-Up Feminist Peace Research. International Political Sociology. doi: 10.1093/ips/oly034

Podcasting Pedagogy for Teaching Peace and War

KUJTESE BEJTULLAHU, RAHEL KUNZ AND RUXANDRA STOICESCU

Audio podcasting is a powerful way of communicating in today’s world. Radio and audio podcasts are used in conflict situations, both as a tool for instigating and preventing it, or building peace. Radio stations, such as those set up by the Hirondelle Foundation, have been established specifically in conflict settings to get parties to dialogue, to diffuse unsubstantiated rumors, and to provide more “balanced” reporting of news.

Podcasts have already become a pedagogical tool in the social sciences, but less so in International Relations (IR). There is an ongoing debate about the pedagogical risks and benefits of using podcasts in the classroom, but the literature does not explore how different disciplines can engage with the medium. When podcasts are predominantly used as a source of information or a way of disseminating it, one can question their pedagogical usefulness depending on content and receptivity, as Steven Lonn and Stephanie Teasley do. If, however, one shifts attention from podcasts as finished products to podcasting as a process of putting together and narrating stories, then it is this collaborative mise-en-scène and the creative choices and affects that go with it that matter pedagogically.

Through the lens of writings on using podcasts in higher education and on critical/alternative pedagogy in IR, we explore—in the following—the potential for podcasting in teaching peace and war. We draw on our experience of co-teaching a course on International Security using podcasting in an interactive process of teaching, learning, and evaluation. By designing and producing their own podcast, students not only used them as a source of information, but experienced podcasting as a more creative and reflective process of exploring and narrating challenging stories about peace and war.

We argue that podcasting is particularly suited to the study of peace and war because it encourages students to relay facts and arguments, and to include the different sensibilities that render some arguments or narratives more believable and memorable than others. Podcasting encourages students to fine-tune their listening skills; to think about creative ways to voice difficult problems and conversations to a concerned audience; and to scrutinize the “scriptedness” behind existing stories on peace and war. Ultimately, we propose that the pedagogical potential of podcasting is its ability to embody and humanize the study of peace and war in a way that traditional IR teaching struggles to do.

The literature on the use of podcasts in higher education ranges from extolling its virtues to doubting its efficacy in helping students improve their academic performance. New technologies do not necessarily open up our thinking. While the use of podcasting with other social goals remains something to develop or debate, certain studies show that they can bring strong learning benefits when students engage in their production. Specifically, the responsibility of delivering a product encourages a more attentive examination of its content and the development of academic responsibility toward it. Key advantages include ease of production, portability, synthetic presentation of a subject, as well as experimenting with language, format, and target audience.

Our starting point was that a mix of creative freedom, technical training, varied sources, and reflective probing can not only turn podcasting into a memorable and stimulating learning experience for students, but it can also help embody and humanize the study of peace and war. Therefore, we linked up with the literature on critical/alternative pedagogies in IR where authors cite the use of alternative tools and sites for teaching and learning. Naeem Inayatullah uses Music of the African Diaspora to develop student’s aesthetic and political sensibilities. Felix Rösch teaches IR through contact improvisation dance. Shiera El-Malik proposes va...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Peace and War in the Classroom
• 2. Podcasting Pedagogy for Teaching Peace and War
• 3. Teaching Peace with Popoki
• 4. Teaching Peace Education at a South African University
• 5. Participatory Action Research For Peacebuilding
• 6. Teaching Counterfactuals from Hell
• 7. Truth, Sources, and the Fog of War
• 8. Conflict and Engagement in “Reacting to the Past” Pedagogy
• 9. Group Projects as Conflict Management Pedagogy
• 10. Teaching Religion, Conflict, and Peace
• 11. Idealism Versus Pragmatism in Teaching Peace in Pakistan
• 12. The Intrigue of Peace and War Curriculum in Africa
• 13. Decolonizing Practices for Western Educators
• 14. Teaching Peace, Not War, to U.S. History Students
• 15. War and Peace in Iraqi Kurdistan’s History Curricula
• 16. Transrational Peacebuilding Education to Reduce Epistemic Violence
• 17. Teaching Tangible Peace
• 18. Teaching the United Nations, Gender, and Critical Pedagogy
• 19. Taking a Stand (or a Seat) in the Peace Studies Classroom
• 20. Circle of Praxis Pedagogy for Peace Studies
• Index