Teachers as Peace-Builders: Reflecting on the Experiences of Refugee-Background Colombian Youth in Southern New Zealand Schools

• In Event: Barrier-Free Access in a (Super)Diverse World: Lessons for Policy and Practice From Refugee-Background Students and Teachers of Diverse Classrooms

Abstract

Objectives and theoretical framework

Peace education that promotes nonviolence in schools has been presented as a strategy for fulfilling Sustainable Development Goals 16 (promoting peaceful and inclusive societies), 10 (reduced inequalities), and four (inclusive and equitable quality education) (Swee-Hin, 2016). While much recent research has focussed on how peace education might promote peaceful and equitable societies, most studies have focused on global south countries that experience direct violence (Morrice, 2021). Little research has attended to countries in the global north where minorities, such as refugees, face experiences of exclusion through racism, Othering, precarious educational access, and low social mobility. This paper draws on participatory action research (PAR) with refugee-background young people resettled in southern Aotearoa NZ during 2018-2020.

This paper draws on the literature on critical peace education and Galtung's (1967) concept of structural violence, to reflect on Afro-Colombian young people’s experiences accessing tertiary education in southern NZ. Based on their narratives of encounters with schools and teachers, I discuss how structural violence traveled and persisted in some cases. The paper advocates for the political transformation of educational institutions, and teaching practices that reflect care, responsibility and interdependence (Anderson et al., 2020; Raghuram, Madge, & Noxolo, 2009) to ensure barrier-free access to education as a peace-building imperative in global north countries that accept refugee-background young people.

Methodology and analysis

As participatory action research (PAR), the study involved working with participants as co-researchers (Kincheloe, 2009) to explore their experiences of education and educational transition in southern Aotearoa NZ. Participants (n=44) joined the study while in senior secondary school, with the exception of two who joined while engaged in university access programmes, and two who were neither studying nor working. Participants are now aged 16-25, and 20 are in tertiary study. This paper focuses on seven of the 15 City B participants – all from Colombia – who identify as African descendants. Along with indigenous communities, Afro-Colombians are the group most affected by forced armed displacement in Colombia (Shultz et al., 2014). The project involved regular workshops planned with participants, sources with data generated through audio and video-recorded discussions, fieldnotes, and co-constructed artefacts. Data were analysed by participants as they chose what to share with us and each other (Kindon, 2016), and by the research team through “reflexive thematic analysis”, applying theory and contextual observations to the summary themes (Braun et al., 2019, p. 5).

Significance

Participants' encounters with teachers and school staff revealed how teachers and educational institutions in the global north reproduced structural violence encountered in the global south. However, participants also discussed how some teachers mitigated such violence through pedagogies of care. The study revealed how identities intersect with structural realities to position refugees as more or less vulnerable in resettlement contexts. The study bridges educational research and migration studies, suggesting how positive peace and peace education scholarship might contribute to violence prevention, framing teachers as political actors and peacebuilders with potential to transform oppressive systems and unjust realities.

Author

• Alejandra del Pilar Ortiz-Ayala, Universität Erfurt
  Presenting Author