Teaching Nonviolence in Teacher Education

• In Event: 42.065 - Translating Eastern Ontologies Into the Classroom: Challenges and Openings for Equity Pedagogy

Abstract

The presenter has been teaching nonviolence—Buddhism- and Taoism-informed—in teacher education for more than five years. In social justice education she has also infused nonviolent orientation in her equity pedagogy. She has found that when pre-service and in service teachers first encounter the notion of nonviolence, many of them resist it, and the notion appears to be more difficult to teach than identity-based multicultural education. To address students’ resistance, the presenter has developed a pedagogical approach that is mindful and Taoist to unite the means and end of nonviolence. Here nonviolence education is defined in a broad sense as cultivating body/mind unity within an individual person and promoting compassionate relationships between self and other.

The purpose of this study is to understand how and why students (pre-service and in-service teachers) respond to the concept of nonviolence and nonviolence education in their particular ways to inform her pedagogical approaches. It is a data-based teacher research (with the IRB permission). This presentation is based upon the analysis of three classes that were taught in 2013 and 2014 with nonviolence as both the topic and orientation of teaching, Analyzing the students’ understandings of the concept of and educational meanings of nonviolence and their changes over the course of the class, examining the relationship of the author’s teaching approaches and students’ learning, the presenter rethink about her pedagogy regarding teaching materials, methods, and community building in the classroom.

Since a mindful and Taoist approach is adopted in teaching, the analytic frame of this study is also informed by Buddhism and Taoism to understand the relational dynamics of the classes. Several aspects of teaching are particularly meaningful for engaging equity pedagogy in new ways. First, cultivating inner peace helped students to get in touch their own capacity for stillness and mindfulness even though it sounds like opposite to social activism. Second, projects that aim at cultivating nonviolent relationships with a non-human being or addressing a historical trauma on the local site are beneficial for cultivating organic relationality. Third, the instructor’s wuwei position, which leads without a central authority and does not force anything but let things emerge, works in long term for transforming students’ previous assumptions. Fourth, building a class community creates a network effect. At the same time, understanding nonviolence and violence as a continuum rather than a binary emerged as an important challenge, and the gap between practicing mindfulness and constructing compassionate relationships with others also needs to be addressed.

This study to formulate equity pedagogy through Buddhist and Taoist nonviolent approaches makes an important contribution to curriculum studies and social justice education.


References (selected):

Lin, Jing, Brantmeier, Edward J., & Bruhn, Christa (2008). Transforming education for peace. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Nagler, Michael (2004). The search for a nonviolent future. Maui, Hawai’i: Inner Ocean.
Wang, Hongyu (2014). Nonviolence and education. New York: Routledge.

Author

• Hongyu Wang, Oklahoma State University - Tulsa