Constructive Conflict Pedagogies for Peace with Justice and Democracy:
Comparative Perspectives and Teaching Resources

About the Conference

This event is by invitation, only


The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals include promoting peaceful and just societies with strong, inclusive democratic patterns of practice. Teachers and teacher educators, among other social actors, can make a crucial difference in fostering young people’s capabilities and inclinations for such participation. However, publicly-funded school systems in Canada and around the world generally do not offer teachers substantial support or guidance to transform transmissive, divisive, inequitable or undemocratic interaction patterns into constructive-conflict pedagogies that can be responsive and empowering to diverse including marginalized young people (Paulson, 2008; Schulz et al., 2010; Vanner et al., 2022). This workshop brings together educators and scholars working in differing national-cultural contexts and types of work — such as restorative peacemaking dialogue, convivencia (nonviolent living together) initiatives, and peacebuilding in schools affected by violent conflict; controversial and urgent issues deliberation pedagogies; difficult histories education’ decolonial and critical anti-racism, gender equity, and refugee integration education; and teacher development and school institution change to support these pedagogies.

The objective of this academic-pedagogical workshop is to facilitate discernment, dialogue, and collaborative inquiry among diverse scholars and educators regarding promising examples of pedagogical practice: how to enact difficult (conflict) pedagogies with children and youth, and how to support teachers’ work and learning for peace with justice and democracy, especially in schools serving non-affluent youth, in a range of violence-affected contexts in Canada, Latin America, and beyond. The goal is to derive both scholarly clarity and practical teaching resources with explanatory scaffolding — to synthesize and mobilize knowledge about core principles and exemplars of teaching and teacher development for peace with justice and democracy.


Organizer: 

Kathy Bickmore, William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies, 2022-23, Canada Program, Weatherhead Center, Harvard University 

Contact

For more information about the workshop please contact:

Helen Clayton
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
1727 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
canada@wcfia.harvard.edu