The main questions in our presentation are: How do young people develop peaceful versus hostile values in formal and informal learning situations? What kind of intercultural learning processes do these situations bring on? Our research is carried out in several upper secondary schools in Poland, the Czech Republic and Sweden. In this paper, we present the part of our project where we highlight the young people’s opinions on multicultural meetings. Our interest is also to study the opportunities for peace development in a multicultural society and the role of formal and informal learning in this process.

This paper deals with a research project concerning how young people develop personal values around peace and violence in the Czech Republic, Poland and Sweden. The main objectives for the project are to investigate if, and in that case how, new identity constructions and intercultural learning processes contribute to peaceful or hostile ethnic relations in the multicultural, global society. This is investigated from the theoretical starting point of the new cosmopolitanism, peace and learning.

Theory

Concepts of positive peace, formal-informal learning and intercultural learning are central in this project. Galtung & Jacobsen’s (2000) concept of positive peace is used to emphasize the fact that peace is more than just the absence of violence. It refers to a genuinely peaceful situation characterized by peaceful values of the individual and social institutions that support equitable distribution of public resources and the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Such a situation is also characterized by the absence of "indirect" or "structural violence", i.e. a type of violence inherent in the society where more people might die in the long run due to unequal and discriminatory treatment than at the outbreak of open violence (Idem, 2000, Galtung, 1990). Intercultural education should be seen both as a culture science and as a practice, which uses diversity as a starting point for human learning, socialization and development. Here, the concept of culture is understood in a broad and dynamic sense and includes not only national, religious and ethnic cultures but also different views and experiences based on gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, class etcetera. (Goldstein-Kyaga, Borgström & Hübinette, 2012). Here the term intercultural is used to emphasize the dynamic and interaction-oriented view of the term. Moreover, the focus is on intercultural learning processes in a broader sense, not only as an activity in the classroom initiated by teachers. Processes of socialization and learning also take place in several learning situations e.g. through the information technology and communication and in the interaction between the individual and their social contexts mediated through a variety of channels (Ziehe, 2009). The media offers today's children and young people new opportunities to learn through social experiences and social interaction (Graviz, 2012). In short, we agree with Selander & Kress (2010), who argue that processes of learning should be understood as semiotic, social processes that reconstruct and transform various communicative actions into knowledge. This process takes place through the use of different signs that create and communicate these activities, and these processes are on going in both formal and informal learning situations.

References Bryman, A. (2002). Samhällsvetenskapliga metoder. Stockholm: Liber. Freire, P. (2000; 1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum Galtung, J. & Jacobsen, C. G. (2000). Searching for Peace: The Road to TRANSCEND. London: Pluto Press. Galtung , J (1990). Cultural Violence. Journal of Peace Research. Vol. 27, No. 3 (Aug., 1990), pp. 291-305. Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/423472 Greene, J.C., Kreider, H. & Mayer, E. (2011). Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Social Inquiry. In Somekh, B. & Lewin, C. (eds). Theory and Methods in Social Research. Los Angeles: SAGE. Goldstein-Kyaga, K., Borgström, M. (2012). Inledning. In K. Goldstein-Kyaga, M. Borgström,&T. Hübinette (Eds.), Den interkulturella blicken i pedagogik - inte bara goda föresatser. Södertörn Studies in Education 2. Huddinge: Södertörn högskola. Graviz, A. (2012). Att lära interkulturalitet genom medier. In K. Goldstein-Kyaga, M. Borgström, & T. Hübinette (Eds.), Den interkulturella blicken i pedagogik - inte bara goda föresatser. Södertörn, Studies in Education 2. Huddinge: Södertörn högskola. Qvarsell, B. (1996). Pedagogisk etnografi för praktiken – en diskussion om förändringsfokuserad pedagogisk forskning. Texter of forskningsmetod. Nr. 2. Stockholm: Pedagogiska institutionen, Stockholms universitet. Selander, S. & Kress, G. (2010). Design för lärande – multimodalt perspektiv. Stockholm: Norstedt. Ziehe, Thomas (2009). Normal learning problems’ in youth: in the context of underlying cultural convictions. In: Knud Illeris (ed.) Contemporary theories of learning. Learning theorists … in their own words. London: Routledge.