Peace and Social Justice Education on Campus


Book Description

This book provides important reflections by and for peace and social justice educators working on college campuses. Importantly, it also integrates the voices of students. More than a feel-good compilation of success stories, however, it illustrates the complexities inherent in teaching and learning about and for peace and social justice. Chapters in the book provide critical assessments of institutions, pedagogies, and practices, making visible the messy but very real spaces in which education and learning occur. Written by faculty and students from many disciplinary areas, the contributions discuss in-class and outside-of-class actions, providing a deeper understanding of best practices and challenges faced by both groups. Albeit in different ways that are reflective of the many different pedagogical approaches to peace and justice education, each chapter integrates ideas, concepts, and reflections from both faculty and students. The conclusion and appendix offer recommendations for future and additional resources for college and university faculty and students interested in learning more about peace and social justice.




Teaching for Peace and Social Justice in Myanmar


Book Description

Bringing together scholars and educators based in Myanmar, the USA, the UK, Denmark, and Thailand, this book presents new perspectives and research on the struggle for social justice and peace in Myanmar at this critical juncture. It shows how actors from diverse backgrounds and regions of Myanmar are drawing from their identities, evoking their agency, and using critical pedagogy to advance social justice and peace. The chapters provide the compelling life stories of the authors, specific examples of what they are doing, and insights of how their work might be applied to other contexts. The topics discussed include addressing structural violence, peace curriculum development, identity-based conflict, teaching the history of the country, promoting inclusion, civic education, critical pedagogy, teacher agency, and agendas of research funding for peacebuilding. The foreword and afterword, written by well-known scholars of Myanmar, address the relevance and importance of the book vis-a-vis the current social and political crisis following the February 2021 military coup.




Social Justice and International Education


Book Description

Social Justice and International Education: Research, Practice, and Perspectives brings together a group of educators, scholars, and practitioners in the field of international education who are doing important and innovative work promoting social justice, confronting inequality, and fostering social responsibility in a global context. The book does not operate on a singular definition of social justice; rather, the authors describe their own working definition and how it has guided their international education work. Divided into three parts, the book explores social justice research, social justice in practice, and different perspectives from practitioners across the field.




Transformative Approaches to Social Justice Education


Book Description

Transformative Approaches to Social Justice Education is a book for anyone with an interest in teaching and learning in higher education from a social justice perspective and with a commitment to teaching all students. This text offers a breadth of disciplinary perspectives on how to center difference, power, and systemic oppression in pedagogical practice, arguing that these elements are essential to knowledge formation and to teaching. Transformative Approaches to Social Justice Education is structured as an ongoing conversation among educators who believe that teaching from a social justice perspective is about much more than the type of readings and assignments found on course syllabi. Drawing on the broadest possible definition of curriculum transformation, the volume demonstrates that social justice education is about both educators’ social locations and about course content. It is also about knowing students and teaching beyond the traditional classroom to meaningfully include local communities, social movements, archives, and colleagues in student and academic affairs. Premised on the notion that continuous learning and growth is critical to educators with deep commitments to fostering critical consciousness through their teaching, Transformative Approaches to Social Justice Education offers interdisciplinary and innovative collaborative approaches to curriculum transformation that build on and extend existing scholarship on social justice education. Newly committed and established social justice pedagogues share their experiences taking up the many difficult questions pertaining to what it means for all of us to participate in shaping a more just, shared future.




Transitional Justice and Education


Book Description

After periods of conflict and authoritarianism, educational institutions often need to be reformed or rebuilt. But in settings where education has been used to support repressive policies and human rights violations, or where conflict and abuses have resulted in lost educational opportunities, legacies of injustice may pose significant challenges to effective reform. Peacebuilding and development perspectives, which normally drive the reconstruction agenda, pay little attention to the violent past. Transitional Justice and Education: Learning Peace presents the findings of a research project of the International Center for Transitional Justice on the relationship between transitional justice and education in peacebuilding contexts. The book examines how transitional justice can shape the reform of education systems by ensuring programs are sensitive to the legacies of the past, how it can facilitate the reintegration of children and youth into society, and how education can engage younger generations in the work of transitional justice.




Sustainable Peacebuilding and Social Justice in Times of Transition


Book Description

This book offers a unique insight into the ways in which education systems, governance, and actors at multiple scales interact in initial steps towards building peace. It presents a spectrum of recently conducted research in the context of Myanmar, a society in the midst of challenging transitions, politically, socio-culturally and economically. Divided in 3 thematical research areas, the first part on Myanmar’s policy landscape aims to unravel the integration of peacebuilding into the education sector at macro and micro policy levels. The second part examines the role teachers play in processes of peacebuilding, and the third part examines ways in which formal and non-formal peacebuilding education programs address the agency of youth in Myanmar. This book is an essential guide for students embarking in the field of education, conflict and peacebuilding.




Engineering and Social Justice


Book Description

This book is aimed at engineering academics worldwide, who are attempting to bring social justice into their work and practice, or who would like to but don't know where to start. This is the first book dedicated specifically to University professionals on Engineering and Social Justice, an emerging and exciting area of research and practice. An international team of multidisciplinary authors share their insights and invite and inspire us to reformulate the way we work. Each chapter is based on research and yet presents the outcomes of scholarly studies in a user oriented style. We look at all three areas of an engineering academic's professional role: research, teaching and community engagement. Some of our team have created classes which help students think through their role as engineering practitioners in society. Others are focusing their research on outcomes that are socially just and for client groups who are marginalized and powerless. Yet others are consciously engaging local community groups and exploring ways in which the University might 'serve' communities at home and globally from a post-development perspective. We are additionally concerned with the student cohort and who has access to engineering studies. We take a broad social and ecological justice perspective to critique existing and explore alternative practices. This book is a handbook for any engineering academic, who wishes to develop engineering graduates as well as technologies and practices that are non-oppressive, equitable and engaged. It is also an essential reader for anyone studying in this interdisciplinary juncture of social science and engineering. Scholars using a critical theoretical lens on engineering practice and education, from Science and Technology Studies, History and Philosophy of Engineering, Engineering and Science Education will find this text invaluable.




Peace Education


Book Description

Peace education is now well recognized within international legal instruments and within critical educational literature as an important aspect of education. Despite this, little attention has been given in the critical literature to the philosophical foundations for peace education and the rationale for peace education thus remains substantially an assumed one. This investigation explores some possible ethico-philosophical foundations for peace education, through an examination of five specific ethical traditions: 1) virtue ethics, whereby peace may be interpreted as a virtue, and/or virtue is interpreted as peacefulness, and peace education as education in that virtue; 2) consequentialist ethics, whereby peace education may be interpreted as education regarding the consequences of our action and inaction, both as individuals and collectivities; 3) conservative political ethics, whereby peace education may be interpreted as emphasizing the importance of the evolution of social institutions and the importance of ordered and lawful social change; 4) aesthetic ethics, whereby peace may be interpreted as something beautiful and valuable in itself, and peace education as emphasizing the importance of that beauty and value; and 5) the ethics of care, whereby care may be interpreted as a core element in peace, and peace education as encouraging trust and engagement with the other. The study addresses major contributions to each of these ethical traditions, the strengths and weaknesses of the tradition, and the ways in which the tradition provides support for peace education. It is argued in the thesis that each tradition provides only a partial basis for peace education, and that ultimately a holistic and integrative understanding is required, one that encourages a culture of peace. " ... an important addition to the emerging literature on peace education and the culture of peace" (From the Foreword by Koichiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO).




Myanmar’s Education Reforms


Book Description

This book reviews the state of education in Myanmar over the past decade and a half as the country is undergoing profound albeit incomplete transformation. Set within the context of Myanmar’s peace process and the wider reforms since 2012, Marie Lall’s analysis of education policy and practice serves as a case study on how the reform programme has evolved. Drawing on over 15 years of field research carried out across Myanmar, the book offers a cohesive inquiry into government and non-government education sectors, the reform process, and how the transition has played out across schools, universities and wider society. It casts scrutiny on changes in basic education, the alternative monastic education, higher education and teacher education, and engages with issues of ethnic education and the debate on the role of language and the local curriculum as part of the peace process. In so doing, it gives voice to those most affected by the changing landscape of Myanmar’s education and wider reform process: the students and parents of all ethnic backgrounds, teachers, teacher trainees and university staff that are rarely heard.




Social Justice Education in America


Book Description

In the last twenty years a body of "social justice educators" has come to power in Americanhigher education. These professors and administrators are transforming higher education intoadvocacy for progressive politics. They also work to reserve higher education jobs for socialjustice advocates, and to train more social justice advocates for careers in nonprofitorganizations, K-12 education, and social work. Social Justice Education in America drawsupon a close examination of 60 colleges and universities to show how social justice educatorshave taken over higher education. The report includes recommendations on how to preventcolleges and universities from substituting activism for learning.