Teaching and Learning Peace within the United Nations Universities: A Sociology of Peace Education

Author(s):

Kevin Kester(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

07. Social Justice and Intercultural Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

07 SES 09 B, Intercultural Peace and Humanist Worldview Education

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-10

11:00-12:30

Room:

3001. [Main]

Chair:

Yvonne Leeman

Contribution

Overview

I am conducting a case study with Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS) lecturers in the United Nations (UN) system. For over forty years, the UN has operated two postgraduate universities, a staff college, and several research and training institutes in a dozen countries around the world. Yet the role of the UN lecturer as an agent in framing and objectifying peace (as an object of study and as a discourse of practice) has rarely been examined.Furthermore, these educators' embodied and institutionalized forms of capital - and their beliefs and social positions in relation to this capital within the field - have not been thoroughly investigated.

My study, therefore, explores how UN university lecturers understand and define the boundaries of peace studies, their reasons for entering this field of work, and the forms of capital they possess that enable them to teach a particular conception of peace – either in continuity with or in disruption of UN norms. The study will also explore how lecturers account for those moments in pedagogy, if any, where the ideal and real peace philosophy/practices are contradictory. The research is intended primarily for educational sociologists interested in exploring peace lecturers’ understandings of the parameters and intellectual boundaries of the educational field in which they practice.

Research Questions

The research hinges on this overarching question: How do peace educators define their intellectual field, position themselves within it, and interpret its pedagogical elements and ambitions in terms of creating peace? This inquiry then involves three sub-questions:

(i) How do lecturers conceive of the field, its parameters and positions;

(ii) How and what do pedagogues teach in peace studies;

(iii) How do lecturers account for the discrepancies, if any, where the intellectual and pedagogic fields are contradictory?

Theoretical Framework

The research employs a social constructivist/structuralist epistemology underscored by Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework of "field theory" (eg. field, habitus, capital) and major ideas drawn from conflict theory (eg. Johan Galtung's typology of violence, educational reproduction, and post-critical theory). Using these theories and Bourdieu's analytic framework, a case study methodology clarifying the boundaries, tensions and positions of lecturers in the field is utilized.

Relevance

This study is particularly relevant today at the culmination of the UN Decades on Cultures for Peace (2001-2010), Education for Sustainable Development (2004-2015), Eradication of Poverty (2008-2017) and the Global Education First Initiative, and more importantly in the midst of the transitions from the pre- to post-2015 MDGs education agenda. Within this education context, international cooperation on education for peace endures, curriculum packs to assist lecturers in teaching for peace at all levels abound, and studies on the correlations between education/schooling, war/conflict, and peace/development are proliferating. Furthermore, evaluations of the effectiveness and impact of peace education are ongoing – yet the important examination of why and how peace educators teach peace (eg. the meanings/values they ascribe to peace education) has not been conducted.

Method

Methods My research methods include the collection of extensive data indicating the lecturers’ perceptions and practices that underscore peace education in the UN. The methods of data collection, and corresponding research instruments, include: (i) Questionnaires with lecturers (to collect demographic information and biographies – to interpret findings) (ii) Documentary analysis (eg. syllabi, websites, CVs, etc.) (iii) Two semi-structured interviews (on field, habitus, capital and pedagogy) (iv) Ethnographic interactions (classroom observations and informal conversations – to triangulate data) (v) Questionnaires with students in lecturers’ courses (to triangulate data) These methods assist me in gathering information on individual lecturers’ biographical histories and what attracted them to the field of peace education. It also helps me distinguish between several factors that may affect the educators’ conceptions/practices, such as those trained/not trained in peace studies, old/new forms of training, global elite/youth, those who identify as scholars/pedagogues, and faith/non-faith backgrounds, and the impact this may have (all responses are confidential). The corresponding interviews then involve a number of semi-structured queries to further understand sorts of personal data that influence the framing of the field, and to capture the conceptualization as well as the nature of the peace education pedagogy. Sample Research participants include resident and visiting professors that are currently teaching within the UN system. The sample represents as much as possible a cross-section of lecturers covering ethnicity/regional representation, gender, varying years of service, and rank within the university/system. Students in the lecturers’ courses are also involved via questionnaires to triangulate data. All participants have at least advanced proficiency in English, as this is a requirement of the institution for lecturers and students to teach and learn in the particular UN agency where the study is conducted (the specific institution is omitted for the purposes of participant confidentiality). Data Analysis The data analysis phase involves three stages of listening that draw on Bourdieu’s social/field structure mapping and discourse analysis. The stages focus on (i) macro constructions of the field, (ii) subject-positioning and habitus in the field, and (iii) emergent themes and capital critical to peace education. I use both open and thematic coding to highlight themes related to Bourdieu’s framework and those emerging from the analysis.

Expected Outcomes

Conclusions The study helps shed light on taken-for-granted assumptions of peace education, the spatial and intellectual parameters of the field, and the intricacies of how educators negotiate, compete and influence the field from within. The major contribution of this work is in offering a glimpse into the practices and challenges of peace studies lecturers at the United Nations and their perceptions of the field. I also expect the study to offer concepts of peace habitus and peace capital in the realm of peace studies, particularly in reference to lecturers’ conceptions of the meanings and values of education for peace. Finally, I hope to contribute to debates on the constraining institutional and social factors educators cite as inhibiting their teaching for cultures of peace in higher education.

References

Bernstein, Basil (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research, critique. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Bourdieu, Pierre (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre (1986). The Forms of Capital. In John Richardson (Ed.) , Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Pp. 241-258. NY: Greenwood Press. Bourdieu, Pierre (1988). Homo academicus. Cambridge: Polity. Bourdieu, Pierre (1989). Social Space and Symbolic Power. Sociological Theory 7(1): 14-25. Bourdieu, Pierre (2003). Participant Objectivation. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 9: 281-294. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Wacquant, Loic (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Galtung, Johan (1969). Violence, peace, and peace research. Journal of Peace Research 6(3): 167-191. Galtung, Johan (1971). A structural theory of imperialism. Journal of Peace Research 8(2): 81-117. Galtung, Johan (1976). Three Approaches to Peace: Peacekeeping, Peacemaking and Peacebuilding. In Johan Galtung, Essays in peace research, vol. 2. Pp. 282-304. Copenhagen: Ejlers. Gee, James Paul (2011). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. New York: Routledge. Mundy, Karen (1998). Educational Multilateralism and World (Dis)Order. Comparative Education Review 42(4): 448-478. Rose, Pauline (2003). From the Washington to the Post-Washington Consensus: The Influence of International Agendas on Education Policy and Practice in Malawi. Globalization, Societies and Education 1(1): 67-86.

Author Information

Kevin Kester (presenting / submitting)

University of Cambridge

Cambridge

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