Decolonial Peace Education: Restorative Circles and Peacebuilding

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Contemporary Perspectives on Peace Education: Evidence from Diverse Contexts

Proposal

The author of this proposal was born and raised in a socio-economically disadvantaged community in Trinidad & Tobago (TT). He is now an educator in the USA and returns often to Trinidad to continue data collection and conduct workshops with students and parents from communities similarly-disenfranchised communities.
TT’s education system is partially inherited from the colonial era, in that the top-performing students on national exams generally attend what are called prestige schools (mostly religiously affiliated and run schools, often created during the colonial era). This has created a two-tier system that reinforces a deeply class-stratified society, in addition to fostering self-esteem issues among youth who are not placed in ‘prestige schools’ (XXX, 2017, 2016). School violence is also an issue that bedevils the TT educational system; these aforementioned issues intersect to render what the author calls a postcolonial structural violence. The author has been researching school violence and potential interventions for almost a decade.
In 2009-2010, the author conducted a 7-month case study of school violence at a non-prestige secondary school (SSS), and then offered restorative circle (RC) and leadership workshops to students at SSS. From 2016 to 2019 (recommenced May of 2024), he also offered the same workshops to parents via a nonprofit organization (Faith Foundation). This long-term grassroots engagement is meant to push back against positivistic conceptions of research that are too often extractive and not reciprocal.
This presentation relies on data from over 300 online surveys about Trinbagonians’ educational experiences in TT and the author’s considerable field notes collected over a 10-year period, and reflections from some of the participants; specifically two former students and their teacher, who were part of the original workshop group, as well as a parent and a coordinator from Faith.
In this presentation, the author expands on his theorization of decolonial peace education and the role RCs can play in grassroots peacebuilding. RCs emanate from ages-old practices from some indigenous communities. RCs center community, trust, power-sharing, healing, dialogue, active listening, empowerment, and humanization; they can be used for conflict resolution or strengthening/ building community.
In merging elements of critical peace education, decolonial theory, dynamical systems theory, restorative practices, and marronage (referring to Maroons: persons who escaped slave plantations and created new/free communities), the author will theorize his restorative circle work in TT as a form of grassroots peacebuilding and decolonial peace education, because it can create space for critical reflection, skills building, intra/inter-personal and communal healing, and in so doing empower historically-disenfranchised peoples to reshape human relationality in neocolonial contexts. The author’s research and work represent decolonial prefigurative (Boggs, 1977) praxis, providing a model for grassroots-based, co-liberatory work toward more just and sustainable futures.

Author

• Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams, Gettysburg College