Mieke T. A. Lopes Cardozo

Sri Lanka: In peace or in pieces? A critical approach to peace education in Sri Lanka

This article seeks to explore the ‘two faces of education’ through a critical analysis of peace education in Sri Lanka. It aims to contribute to the wider debate on the complex role of education in situations of conflict. The article starts with an overview of what peace education is, or should be. This leads to the conclusion that peace education cannot succeed in isolation, and needs to be incorporated in a multilevel process of peacebuilding. Further analysis draws from Bush & Saltarellis notion of the ‘two faces of education’, combined with Lynn Daviess notion of ‘war education’. These notions help to explain to what extent (peace) education in Sri Lanka contributes to positive or negative conflict, or, in other words, which one of the two ‘faces’ is most prominent. The positive side of education is employed through inter-group encounters, the stimulation of self-esteem and a ‘peaceful school environment’. Through dialogue and understanding, these initiatives stimulate a desegregation of a very segregated school system and society. However, these positive initiatives remain limited. Other, more structural issues, tend to work towards the negative face of education, by fostering segregation, fear and bias rather than counteracting them. These issues form pressing challenges for peace educators and policy makers in Sri Lanka. Critically informed research and evaluation should provide guidelines for well-thought through peace education initiatives, by working towards a combination of critical theory and problem-solving approaches to deliver both critical and hands-on guidelines for further peace education initiatives.

Losing ground: a critical analysis of teachers’ agency for peacebuilding education in Sri Lanka

This paper aims to explore the agency of teachers for peacebuilding education in Sri Lanka through a critical multiscalar analysis of the interplay between context – education policies and governance – and agent – teachers as strategic political actors. It draws on two studies conducted in Sri Lanka in 2006 and 2011 to give insight into a changing context from conflict to post-conflict. While peace education and social cohesion were high on the political agendas before the official ending of the conflict, the need for a continuous and integral peace education approach seems to be losing political ground in present-day Sri Lanka. The paper seeks to contribute to the broader debate on the complex role of education and teachers in conflict and post-conflict situations.

Decolonising Bolivian Education: Ideology Versus Reality

In line with a broader Latin American turn to the left, since 2006, Bolivia’s ‘politics of change’ of president Evo Morales includes a new ‘decolonising’ education reform called Avelino Sinani Elizardo Perez (ASEP). This ‘revolutionary reform’ envisions a radical restructuring of Bolivian society and revaluation of indigenous heritage through education and aims to replace the former ‘imposed’ neo-liberal education reform of 1994. Geared towards broader sociopolitical processes of social justice, Bolivia’s envisaged education transformation is built around four pillars, being (1) decolonisation, (2) intra- and interculturalism together with plurilingualism, (3) productive education and (4) communitarian education. Taking the contemporary Bolivian societal and educational context of tensions and inequalities as a starting point, this chapter analyses how the ‘revolutionary ideal’ of a social justice-oriented education system to ‘vivir bien’ – as laid down in the ASEP reform – is perceived by the different actors involved to be both appropriate and feasible. With this aim, the chapter examines the various challenges and opportunities for the policy discourse of the new ASEP reform for decolonising education and the government’s idea of teachers as the ‘soldiers of transformation’ to translate into an educational reality. In conclusion, there is still a long way to go to bridge the gap between ideological intentions and a complex educational reality.

A conceptual framework to analyse the multiscalar politics of education for sustainable peacebuilding

ABSTRACT A critical and more nuanced understanding of the multifaceted relationship between projects of peacebuilding and educational provision is starting to develop. Drawing on an epistemological and ontological anchor of critical realism, and a methodology informed by the application of cultural political economy analysis and the strategic relational approach to understanding educational discourses, processes and outcomes, we illustrate how the ‘many faces’ of education in conflict-affected situations can be better theorised and conceptually represented. In doing so, we link goals of peacebuilding to those of social justice, and reinvigorate the notion of education playing a transformative rather than a restorative role in conflict-affected contexts. Making such ideas concrete, we provide examples of how such an analytical framework can be employed to understand the multi-faceted relationship between education and projects of social transformation in conflict-affected environments across the globe.

Reclaiming Reconciliation through Community Education for the Muslims and Tamils of Post-War Jaffna, Sri Lanka.

This paper explores the possibilities and challenges for ethno-religious reconciliation through secondary school education in post-war Sri Lanka, with a specific focus on the Muslim and Tamil communities in the Northern city of Jaffna. In doing so, we position our paper within the growing field of ‘education, conflict and emergencies’ of which there has been a growing body of literature discussing this contentious relationship. The paper draws from an interdisciplinary and critical theoretical framework that aims to analyse the role of education for peacebuilding, through a multi-scalar application of four interconnected dimensions of social justice: redistribution, recognition, representation and reconciliation (or 4 R’s, Novelli, Lopes Cardozo and Smith, 2015). We apply this framework to interpret primary data collected through an ethnographic study of two under-studied communities that have been disproportionately affected by the 1983 to 2009 civil war and displacement: the Northern Sri Lankan Muslims and Northern Sri Lankan Tamils. We find that structural inequalities in society are replicated in formal secondary school education and are perceived to be perpetuating ethno-religious conflict between Muslim and Tamil; second, through a multi-scalar analysis, formal peace education is perceived by respondents not to be meeting the needs of communities; and third, we observe how in response to failings of state peace education, an ‘unofficial’ Tamil–Muslim community education incorporating a social justice-based approach has emerged. This has facilitated a process of cross-community reconciliation between Muslim and Tamil through individual (teachers, students) and community (Muslim–Tamil community based organisations) agency. The paper concludes by offering suggestions for peace education policy and future research.

Transformative teachers or teachers to be transformed? The cases of Bolivia and Timor-Leste:

Applying the Strategic Relational Approach, this paper analyses the circumstances behind and educators’ strategies in response to education reforms in two nation-states undergoing socio-political transformation – Bolivia and Timor-Leste. Despite the starkly different histories and contemporary context of each nation, we suggest that transformation in both settings is driven by a desire to unshackle histories of colonisation and social conflict. Education reform, at least discursively, aims to dislocate past practices and replace them with a new material reality. In such spaces, we find that teachers are acting as strategic political actors, but in ways that are historically situated and driven by real and perceived personal and professional constraints. Their actions lead to particular types of ‘resistance’ and strategic action, leading to outcomes that are simultaneously continuous and disconnected from the past.

‘The fruit caught between two stones’: the conflicted position of teachers within Aceh's independence struggle†

ABSTRACT This paper explores the challenging situation faced by teachers as professionals and members of the community in Aceh, Indonesia during the provinces civil war. It reveals how teachers’ sense of agency during this period was deeply influenced by the economic/material, political and socio-cultural condition at that time – conditions and experiences which today have bearing on a place for teachers in the post-conflict peace-building process occurring in the province. During the conflict, teachers struggled to balance their strategic societal positioning – as civil servants and community members – and found themselves caught in the middle of a complex range of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forces at play. This position of constraint, we argue, limited the ability of teachers to act as peace-builders during the conflict, and continues to influence teachers’ ability to function in such ways today.

Situating studies of education and conflict within the evolving field of comparative and international education: past, present and future

As two of the convenors responsible for the thematic group on Education and Conflict at the 2013 Comparative Education World Congress in Buenos Aires, we envisaged, in line with the conference theme of New Times, New Voices, a group of papers which would show how studies investigating the myriad faces of education in conflict are situated within the broader discipline of comparative and international education.

Turbulence in Bolivia’s normales: Teacher education as a socio-political battlefield

In line with broader politics of change at the national level, the Morales government aims at a radical restructuring of the governance mechanisms for the teacher education sector and a socio-political redirection of its curriculum, as teachers are perceived to be potential agents for decolonization and for developing social justice—or vivir bien (to live well). Morales’ policies are not uncontested, and the tense socio-political state of affairs and political power plays are reflected in Bolivia’s normales, teacher education colleges. They have become a socio-political battlefield where political affiliations, union strategies, and historically embedded institutional cultures all influence the way new generations of teachers are trained, and the way former and current policy initiatives are mediated and adopted. Given the complex and historically embedded socio-political context of struggles and tensions at and around the institutional level, the government still has a long way to go to change the continuing habits of the normales and to put its government’s new ideals of transformation and decolonization into practice.

Myanmar’s Education System: Historical Roots, the Current Context, and New Opportunities

This chapter provides an overview of the historical development of educational provision in Myanmar. Starting with pre-colonial forms of schooling, which occurred almost entirely outside the confines of the state, the chapter traces the evolution through colonisation and the country’s independence to the non-state and state-provided education systems that exist today. In charting this evolution, the chapter highlights how, while the general intent has been for the state to centralise control and have a monopoly over education provision for the purposes of nation-building, strong dissent, particularly from minority groups, and a lack of sufficient access and quality has led to a continuation of a fragmented and de-facto decentralised system. In light of the current sector-wide reforms within education, there are particular challenges and grievances—around redistribution, recognition, representation and reconciliation—that this context creates for the reforms’ broader ambitions.