Kathy Bickmore

Learning Inclusion/Inclusion in Learning: Citizenship Education for a Pluralistic Society

Society is conflictual: pluralistic democracy in particular relies on conflict as a mechanism of change. To be incorporated as citizens, young people need skills and information for making decisions and solving problems; that is, for handling the conflicts that come up in society. This research analyzes two cases of implemented world studies curricula: the teachers followed the same district guidelines, but they made contrasting choices regarding how to involve their diverse students in social education. In the class taught by Ruth Murray,1 students “learned inclusion” by analyzing teacher-interpreted information about diverse cultures and ideologies. Sarah Gilberts students were “included in learning” by taking conflicting viewpoints in response to social studies themes. Attention to conflict seemed to foster inclusion of some of the silent students found in both classes.

Policies and Programming for Safer Schools: Are "Anti-bullying" Approaches Impeding Education for Peacebuilding?

Prevailing anti-violence practices in public schools, especially in the context of recently increased emphasis on bullying, often allocate more resources to surveillance and control than to facilitation of healthy relationships or conflict/ peace learning. This policy emphasis increases the risks of marginalization and reduces opportunities for diverse students to develop autonomy and mutual responsibility. This qualitative study examines educators’ contrasting interpretations of various school safety and conflict management initiatives in practice, in peaceful and less peaceful schools serving stressed urban populations, and points out spaces for potential policy shifts and clarifications that could enhance sustainable peacebuilding in schools.

How Might Social Education Resist Heterosexism? Facing the Impact of Gender and Sexual Ideology on Citizenship

Abstract This paper examines the mutually-reinforcing problems of sexism and heterosexism, and the actions that may be taken by social educators to ameliorate such injustices. Various approaches to anti-heterosexism education are organized in relation to the three dimensions of handling social conflict: intervention procedures (in particular the management of sexual and heterosexist harassment), teaching knowledge and skills (in particular skills for recognizing the role of gender and sexuality in culture and for managing controversy), and restructuring patterns of relationship (in particular reducing the climate of heteronormativity and status competition that exacerbate harassment and exclusion).

Foundations for Peacebuilding and Discursive Peacekeeping: Infusion and Exclusion of Conflict in Canadian Public School Curricula.

Formal curriculum guidelines reflect prevailing understandings and political will, and help to shape the resources available for implemented curriculum. The understandings embodied in such public curriculum reinforce patterns of social violence and injustice, yet at the same time may provide diverse students with opportunities to develop commitment and critical citizenship capacity to handle social conflict. This paper examines the discourse about conflict, social diversity, and (in)justice in the mandated English Language Arts, Health, and Social Sciences curricula of three Canadian provinces. On one hand, all these curricula acknowledge the existence of bias and multiple viewpoints, and encode expectations for conflict management and critical inquiry skills, recognition of ethno‐cultural diversity, and awareness of international interdependence and justice concerns. Thus a significant proportion of the knowledge, skill, and pedagogy called for by international peace and conflict educators is already included in these curricula. At the same time, these themes are primarily represented in abstract terms emphasizing ‘Canadian’ ideals, instead of examining many actual instances of social conflict. Is this anti‐conflictual representation of social conflict a solid foundation for democratic peacebuilding, (and) or a gentle manner of peacekeeping through denial and indoctrination?

Constructive Conflict Talk in Classrooms: Divergent Approaches to Addressing Divergent Perspectives

Abstract Dialogue about social and political conflicts is a key element of democratic citizenship education that is frequently advocated in scholarship but rarely fully implemented, especially in classrooms populated by ethnically and economically heterogeneous students. Qualitative case studies describe the contrasting ways 2 primary and 2 middle-grade teachers in urban Canadian public schools infused conflict dialogue pedagogies into their implemented curricula. These lessons, introducing conflict communication skills and/or content knowledge embodying conflicting viewpoints as learning opportunities, actively engaged a wide range of students. At the same time, even these purposively selected teachers did not often facilitate sustained, inclusive, critical, and imaginative exchange or deliberation about heartfelt disagreements, nor did they probe the diversity and equity questions surrounding these issues. The case studies illustrate a democratic education dilemma: Even in the classrooms of skilled and committed teachers, opportunities for recognition of contrasting perspectives and discussion of social conflicts may not necessarily develop into sustained democratic dialogue nor interrupt prevailing patterns of disengagement and inequity.

Preparation for pluralism: Curricular and extracurricular practice with conflict resolution

Ironically, this crucial ingredient is often censored or simplified out of the public school curriculum (Anyon, 1979; Apple, 1979; Ehman, 1980; McNeil, 1986). Peace can be taught, but only by confronting the human differences that make peacemaking a challenge (Hahn & Tocci, 1990; Henry, 1994; Johnson, 1995). Schools are supposed to help students expand their horizons and experiment with new behaviors and understandings, beyond the approaches to conflict that are modeled in their neighborhoods or the popular culture. If we infuse conflict into learning opportunities, then students can practice conflict resolution in ways that will help them to become effective nonviolent actors in this pluralistic society. This article considers two complementary ways of doing this in school: (a) special training sessions that focus directly on conflict resolution, separating it from other subject matter, and (b) more diffuse but sustained conflict resolution opportunities that are integrated into academic coursework. Any course that deals with language, communication, problem solving, or human relationships can offer opportunities to learn conflict resolution. This article focuses on the social studies, because of their central role in citizenship preparation. Virtually everybody takes social studies, so

Peacebuilding Dialogue Pedagogies in Canadian Classrooms.

Abstract Constructively critical and inclusive dialogue about conflictual issues is one necessary ingredient of both democratic citizenship and peacebuilding learning. However, in North American classrooms populated by heterogeneous and non-affluent students, pedagogies involving discussion of conflicts are rarely fully implemented, sustained, or inclusive of all students’ voices. This article reports the results of a study describing contrasting ways in which teachers actually did implement (or attempt) dialogic pedagogies on difficult issues in Canadian public school classrooms. Based on a series of observations and interviews in 11 public elementary, intermediate, and secondary classrooms (linked to three different professional development initiatives), the article examines key elements—in the content of the conflicts discussed; in the processes and task structures for classroom discussion; in the norms, skills, and relationships established; and in the school contexts—that make such dialogic classroom activities more (or less) feasible to implement and sustain, more (or less) inclusive of previously marginalized voices, and more (or less) constructive for democratic and peacebuilding education.

Voices of Canadian and Mexican Youth Surrounded by Violence: Learning Experiences for Peace-Building Citizenship.

How do young people living in high-violence contexts express a sense of democratic agency and hope, and/or frustration and hopelessness, for handling various kinds of social and political conflict problems? The management of conflict is a core challenge and purpose of democracy, severely impeded by the isolation and distrust caused by violence. Publicly funded schools can be (but often are not) part of the solution to such challenges (Bickmore, 2014; Davies, 2011). This article is drawn from a larger on-going project probing the (mis)fit between young people’s lived citizenship and conflict experiences, and their school-based opportunities to develop democratic peace-building capacities, in non-affluent local contexts surrounded by violence, in an international comparative perspective. We report on focus group conversations with several small groups of students, ages 10–15, in two Canadian and four Mexican schools in marginalized urban areas. Diverse participating young people tended to have a stronger sense of agency and hope in relation to some kinds of conflicts (such as environmental pollution) compared to others (such as unemployment and insecure work or drug-gang violence). In general, they did not feel that their lived citizenship knowledge was much valued or built upon in school.

Creating capacities for peacebuilding citizenship: history and social studies curricula in Bangladesh, Canada, Colombia, and México

Abstract Public education is one influence on how young people learn to navigate social conflicts and to contribute to building democratic peace, including their sense of hope or powerlessness. Social studies curricula, in particular, introduce core concerns, geographies, governance and civil society, and participation skills and norms. History education narratives frame identity, (dis)trust or peaceful coexistence, and provide exemplars of how social conflicts and injustice have been handled in the past. To shed light on these peacebuilding and peace-blocking choices, this paper examines government-sanctioned social studies and history curricula in contrasting contexts of violent conflict and peace: Bangladesh, Colombia, México, and (Ontario) Canada. Our comparative analysis shows how these official curricula (de)normalize violence and militarism, present national identities as hegemonic/exclusive or plural/inclusive, and create opportunities for teaching/learning peacebuilding citizenship competencies such as conflict dialog, human rights awareness, and engagement in collective processes of civil society and governance.

Incorporating Peace-Building Citizenship Dialogue in Classroom Curricula

Facilitated dialogue about questions of social justice and other conflictual issues is a key component of education for peacebuilding and democratic citizenship (Davies, 2005; Hahn, 2010; Harris & Morrison, 2003; Hess & Avery, 2008; Sears & Hughes, 2006). Education for democratic social justice and sustainable peace disrupts the existing social order, surfacing conflict and uncertainty.