Peace Making and Peace Building in Schools: Findings from an Evaluation of a Whole School Approach in the UK

Author(s):

Hilary Cremin(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

This paper reports on an evaluation of a peace education programme (Peacemakers Whole School Approach, WSA) that was implemented in 4 primary schools in the UK between 2012 and 2014. The programme was carried out by the West Midlands Quaker Peace Education Project, and was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The Peacemakers WSA programme in each school involved a peace worker committing a substantial amount of time to both formal and informal support. She was able to follow up on training, for example, through modelling work with students, and through offering to resolve conflicts between both adults and young people.

The aims of the Peacemakers WSA were to: create a safer school with better conditions for learning; develop skills for life in the area of conflict resolution; encourage every member of the school community to be better equipped to make, maintain and repair relationships; and explore ways to help schools build and maintain peaceful relationships at all levels.

Method

The evaluation used a pre-post test design. Some of the data was quantitative, and came from self-report questionnaires, and some of it was qualitative and came from visits to the schools and interviews with key people. The data collection and analysis process was based around two periods of five days in each school, one at the outset and another at the end. The interviews that were carried out in each school took place informally and at the convenience of the school. Typically they included interviews with senior managers, class teachers, students and lunchtime supervisors. The questionnaires included a life-in-schools checklist for students, and a more general questionnaire for adults. These were completed by a sample of adults and children in the school. The life-in-schools checklist for students gave 40 statements (20 positive, e.g. someone lent me something, 20 negative, e.g. someone teased me because I am different) that students ticked if they had occurred in the last week. The adult questionnaire included statements such as, ‘my voice is listened to in school,’ and respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed against a five-point scale. The expectation was that students would experience more positive aspects of school life and less negative over the time of the programme, and that there would be an improvement in the quality of adults’ relationships in school.

Expected Outcomes

The programme supported all four schools to work towards above aims, and achieved a certain degree of success. During the timeframe of the programme, not everyone in the school experienced improvements in safety and conditions for learning, and not everyone wanted to participate, but everyone entered into meaningful conversations about the nature of relationships, learning and conflict, and some made significant and positive changes. Students were able to resolve conflict without relying so heavily on adults, and some experienced reductions in name-calling and teasing. Some factors were within the sphere of Peacemakers WSA’s influence, others were not. Factors that were outside of their influence, such as changes in senior management, impacted negatively on the programme at times in ways that were hard to predict. One of the most significant findings of the research was connected to the nature of change in schools. It provided many opportunities to reflect on how projects such as this should respond to individual team-members who do not share its objectives, or who find it difficult or challenging to sustain these approaches. It highlighted the nature of schools as complex eco-systems that are influenced by a wide range of factors at the micro and the macro level, and threw into question traditional models of school improvement that draw on modernist and mechanistic models of change.

References

Gur-Ze’ev, I. (2011) Improvisation, Violence and Peace Education. In P.P. Trifonas, & B. Wright, (Eds) Critical Issues in Peace and Education, New York: Routledge Harber, C. (2004) Schooling as Violence, Abingdon: RoutledgeFalmer Toews, B. & Zehr, H. (2003) Ways of knowing for a restorative worldview. In E.G.M. Weitekamp & H-J. Kerner (Eds) Restorative Justice in Context: International Practice and Directions, Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 257-271 Lincoln, Y. & Denzin, N. (2000) The Seventh Moment: Out of the past In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln Handbook of Qualitative Research (second edition) London: Sage Arora, T. (1994): Measuring Bullying with the “Life in School” Checklist, Pastoral Care in Education: An International Journal of Personal, Social and Emotional Development, 12:3, 11-15 Biesta, G. & Cilliers, P. (2008) From Representation to Emergence: Complexity's challenge to the epistemology of schooling, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 40:1, 213-227

Author Information

Hilary Cremin (presenting / submitting)

University of Cambridge

Faculty of Education

Cambridge

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