Accepting Responsibility as International Citizen-Scholars: Student Awakenings for Justice and Peace in Occupied Palestine

• In Event: Rethinking the Curriculum Toward Liberatory Peace Education

Abstract

The study reports on interviews conducted with students from Australia, France, Germany, and Japan who were studying at an intensive Arabic language program at a leading Palestinian university in the Occupied West Bank. Students were asked to share their multilingual journeys and discoveries as Arabic language learners and to reflect upon deep learnings about self as well as Palestinian language and culture while participating in field trips to a Bedouin village, mosques and churches, the Separation Wall, farms in the Jordan valley and Palestinian refugee camps. The study documents participant ways of knowing and becoming as citizen-scholars, as students engaged in learning by doing through a dialogic and transformative curriculum that promoted human rights and social responsibility.

Authors

• Shelley Wong, George Mason University

• Thuy Tu, George Mason University

• Hanada Kharma, Birzeit University

• Sa’d Nimer, Birzeit University

• Ilham Nasser, International Institute of Islamic Thought