Teach Peace Secondary Pack

The U.K.-based Peace Education Network is pleased to release this second edition of their Secondary Level curriculum. The Teach Peace Secondary pack is aimed at 11–18-year- olds and follows on from the success of the Teach Peace Pack for primary school pupils aged 5–11. It considers themes around children and human rights education, decolonising the curriculum, local, national and international examples of peace in action. It brings together practice from throughout the UK and asks young people to consider the very big questions of peaceful practice.

Copies of the lesson materials described in this brochure are available online at:  http://bit.ly/teach-peace-TES or www.tes.com/teaching-resources/shop/peace_edu_network_uk

Empowering students for just societies: a handbook for primary school teachers

The activities in this UNESCO Teachers handbook (77 pages, PDF) are rooted in Global Citizenship Education, an approach which can help foster young people’s trust in public institutions, transforming them into agents of change instead of allowing feelings of disenfranchisement and victimhood to fester. UNESCO works with UNODC to promote the rule of law, democracy and human rights through education.

The lessons in the handbook are interactive: democracy is demonstrated, as students participate in mock elections or take on the roles of judges – jurors – local mayors and refugees. Games and story-telling help bring social issues to life, prompting students to take a moral stand.

Diminishing Islands is one included game the young children loved to play. It teaches them about common causes for conflict, and about the need to work together without resorting to violence. Children occupy ‘islands’ of newspaper on the classroom floor, but as the game develops their ‘islands’ disappear, and they find themselves crowded onto just a few islands, until at the end, most are ‘out’. Afterwards, the teacher leads the class in reflection on how the game made them feel, and on how it relates to real life challenges – war, migration, poverty, inequality. One primary aged child who played this game learnt a valuable lesson about working together: ‘We have to do our best to help one another to survive because I don’t want to be alone on an island’.

Education for a culture of peace in a gender perspective

Betty Reardon’s 2001 publication, Education for a Culture of Peace in a Gender Perspective, can be downloaded for free via UNESCO’s digital library. Betty Reardon expresses the basic rationale for including a gender perspective: “War also reinforces and exploits gender stereotypes and exacerbates, even encourages, violence against women. Changing these circumstances, devising a peace system, and bringing forth a culture of peace requires an authentic partnership between men and women. Such a system would take fully into account the potential and actual roles of women in public policy and peace-making as advocated in UNESCO’s Statement on Women’s Contribution to a Culture of Peace. Such participation would indicate an authentic partnership, based on the equality of the partners. Equality between men and women is an essential condition of a culture of peace. Thus education for gender equality is an essential component of education for a culture of peace.”

Risk, Resilience, and Online Radicalization: Parent and Caregivers’ Toolkit for the COVID-19 Era

This guide, developed by American University’s Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL), offers parents and caregivers strategies and tips to recognize the warning signs of youth radicalization as well as new risks in the COVID-19 era, understand the drivers and grievances that create susceptibility to extremist rhetoric, and intervene more effectively. The guide was launched in summer 2020 with a webinar and will be followed by an impact study. It is currently being expanded and revised for broader communities of practitioners with research including focus groups with teachers, educators, school counselors, mental health practitioners and more.

Peace Pedagogy Learning Modules from Peacelearner.org

A series of learning modules developed by Daryn Cambridge for a Peace Pedagogy course he taught at American University in the Fall of 2012. The course was designed around seven pillars of peace education: community building, enabling multiple intelligences, nurturing emotional intelligence, exploring approaches to peace, re-framing history, transforming conflict nonviolently, and life-skills building. The learning modules were posted at the public website PeaceLearner.org as part of the course. Here’s a listing of the available modules:

Learning Module 1 – Welcome to Peace Pedagogy
Learning Module 2 – Peace Education Voices
Learning Module 3 – Community Building
Learning Module 4 – Social and Emotional Intelligence
Learning Module 5 – Conflict Resolution
Learning Module 6 – Yoga and Meditation
Learning Module 7 – Nonviolence
Learning Module 8 – Environmental Sustainability

Elicitive Curricular Development: A Manual for Scholar-Practitioners Developing Courses in International Peace and Conflict Studies

This book is co-authored by Peace Studies Innsbruck core faculty Josefina Echavarría Alvarez, Adham Hamed and Noah B. Taylor and it outlines central principles of the University of Innsbruck’s approach to curricular development for Peace and Conflict Studies around the world. It has been authored in the framework of the project Education for Peace in the Iraqi Higher Education System, implemented by the University of Innsbruck in partnership with the Iraqi Al-Amal Association the United Nations Development Program in Iraq and nine Iraqi Universities.

The ECDM is a systematic collection of experiences and lessons identified in academic contexts around the world in Austria, Cambodia, Colombia, Brazil, Ethiopia and Iraq. The ECDM reflects core elicitive principles such as the importance of a focus on relationships, looking beyond the episode of conflict, collaboration, communication and local knowledge. These principles are consistent with the mission of the Research Center for Peace and Conflict (InnPeace) to teach, learn and research as reflective processes of relevant social questions of peace and conflict transformation.

This manual offers helpful guidelines for academic and administrative staff, as well as international cooperation partners trusted with developing peace and conflict courses at the graduate and postgraduate levels.

Quaker Peacemakers Poster Collection

This set of 10 letter-size posters describes the work of 9 Quakers (members of the Religious Society of Friends) active in various domains of peacemaking. Featured peacemakers include Lewis Fry Richardson, Adam Curle, Bayard Rustin, Elise Boulding, Kenneth Boulding, Priscilla Prutzman, Jennifer Beer, Bill Kreidler and George Lakey. Also featured is the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP), a Quaker-founded program working in prisons and community settings. Each poster includes a quote, a stylized picture and biographical background information on the featured person or project.

Social Justice Standards – Teaching Tolerance

The Social Justice Standards are a set of anchor standards and age-appropriate learning outcomes divided into four domains—identity, diversity, justice and action (IDJA). The standards provide a common language and organizational structure: Teachers can use them to guide curriculum development, and administrators can use them to make schools more just, equitable and safe. The standards are leveled for every stage of K–12 education and include school-based scenarios to show what anti-bias attitudes and behavior may look like in the classroom.

Young Community Mediators Peer to Peer Mediation Curriculum

Young Community Mediators is a regional EU-based group established with the purpose of equipping young people age 16-30 with the knowledge and skills to become peer mediators, empowering the youth of society to play a greater role in addressing conflict in the community around them thus helping to create a brighter future.

This 85-page PDF guide initially focuses on the trainer through a training delivery support-focused section. Following on from the tutor support guidelines is the Young Community Mediators Peer to Peer Mediation Curriculum which consists of five modules. The first Module is designed as an introduction module where participants are welcomed on to the programme and facilitated to engage as a group. They are introduced to the area of conflict, mediation and to the peer to peer mediation process. At the initial stage the trainer will conduct an audit of the participant’s level of understanding and knowledge of peer to peer mediation. Modules 2-5 are concentrated on the main themes and skills required to deliver a youth peer to peer mediation resolution process successfully. The modules are;
– Introduction & Welcome
– Understanding Conflict
– Peer Mediation & Listening Skills
– Overview and process involved in the Peer Mediation Event
– Decision Making & Teamwork
The modules are each designed as 4-hour peer mediation training sessions. Each module commences with a tutor module overview containing a module descriptor with the individual learning objectives/outcomes. Learning objectives/outcomes spell out exactly what should be achieved by the learning event.

Peace education: A pathway to a culture of peace (2nd Edition)

209-page pdf book designed to provide educators with the basic knowledge base as well as the skill- and value-orientations that we associate with educating for a culture of peace. Although this work is primarily directed towards the pre-service and in-service preparation of teachers in the formal school system, it may be used in nonformal education.

Part I presents chapters that are meant to help us develop a holistic understanding of peace and peace education. Part II discusses the key themes in peace education. Each chapter starts with a conceptual essay on a theme and is followed by some practical teaching-learning ideas that can either be used in a class or adapted to a community setting. Part III focuses on the peaceable learning climate and the educator, the agent who facilitates the planting and nurturing of the seeds of peace in the learning environment. Finally, the whole school approach is introduced to suggest the need for institutional transformation and the need to move beyond the school towards engagement with other stakeholders in the larger society.

Standards for Peace Education

11-page pdf provides a list of recommended standards for students, teachers and teacher educators with respect to peace education. They were developed under the leadership of Dr. Candice C. Carter from the University of North Florida during her global and domestic work with peace educators and peace education researchers. These dynamic standards have been used for students in all levels of education as well as for program design. Suggestions for, and outcomes of, their use in particular cultures and contexts are welcomed.

The Elementary Child: Teaching to the Spirit, Teaching for Peace

This combined 2-part article (published in 2 separate issues of Montessori Leadership), provides an overview of how Cathleen Haskins implemented a peace education curriculum in a Montessori classroom. It provides information on Montessori’s call for peace education, and specific details on the curriculum autonomously created (activities and exercises) and used with students aged 6-9 years, in both a public Montessori and private.

Ideas for human rights education

24-page PDF report of a project whose primary aim, “was to document good practices in human rights education across the school sectors in Victoria, and to disseminate interesting and innovative ideas from which schools and teachers can draw, according to their local needs and issues. This resource has three sections entitled Lesson Sparks, Whole School Organisation and Activities and School and Community Partnerships. The activities in each section are not prescriptive, and this resource does not attempt to provide a full curriculum for human rights education. Rather, it is intended that the suggested activities will confirm many current practices in schools as contributing to a human rights agenda, and act as springboards for further ideas for human rights education for schools and their communities.”

National policies on education for democratic citizenship in the Americas: Analytic report

48-page PDF report with the goal of “address[ing] the gap in the literature on national policies in citizenship education in the Americas, providing an initial “mapping” of these policies, at the formal and non-formal levels. To that end, the analysis focuses on national policies and standards, the school curriculum within which citizenship education is embedded, places and age levels where citizenship education occurs, and the extent to which citizenship programs are evaluated. Twenty-five countries participated in this study. Selected demographic characteristics of the countries are reported in Appendix 1.”