Professor Julia Paulson presents "Tensions and opportunities in peace education."
This presentations explores some of the tensions and opportunities in peace education opened by the conference theme ‘Who builds peace? The relationships between the international, the national, region and local levels in peacebuilding.’ In particular, it explores tensions between international humanitarian approaches to education, which apply humanitarian neutrality to education, and activist education initiatives, which often start from an acknowledgement of the deeply political nature of education. The presentation also explores the tendency, at international and national levels, to focus peace education interventions on curricular change as opposed to structural reforms of education despite the fact that these reforms may do more to address the root causes of conflict and violence. Throughout the presentation, examples are drawn from the creative work of colleagues in the Education, Justice and Memory network (EdJAM) to develop new approaches for teaching and learning about the violent past in order to build more just futures.
