Conceptualization of peace and (de)formation of peace sensitivity in a context of foreign language teaching

• In Event: Highlighted session: Philosophical and pedagogical perspectives on peace education

Proposal

Many volunteer associations and non-governmental organizations around the world are currently promoting global awareness on peace and encouraging dialogue among diverse communities through printed or visual media. They are striving for a sustainable world community that is able to eliminate conflicts, inequities, and injustice. This appears as a 21st century goal in many international summits and calls for action. On the other hand, media organs of some corporate and governmental agencies march people towards othering or even racism and mobilize the idea of separation through a variety of channels. This is the other side of the medallion being one of the biggest challenges that current activists confront. At this juncture, we need more powerful spaces and critical actors to enhance peace-building initiatives to be reflected in and experienced through people’s decisions and behaviours. Education is attributed to play a pivotal role in this global achievement. Along with the settings of many other academic disciplines, foreign language classrooms with all their components and stakeholders could become a crucial platform for conceptualizing, speaking about, and disseminating peace. Therefore, this paper portrays how a foreign language teaching context in higher education can (or cannot) become an agent promoting peace in a global sense.

There are three indispensable parties in such a pedagogical platform: (1) foreign language teachers as providers of information on other cultures or societies through a foreign language, (2) foreign language learners as receivers, absorbers, and creators of ideas on other cultures or societies, and (3) overt or covert curricula as means of all learning and teaching processes. Building on this tripartite model, this paper critically analyzes the contribution of foreign language teaching to the contemporary idea of peace and its function in increasing or decreasing the number of peace sensitive world citizens.

As qualitative research seeks to propose a naturalistic investigation and a complete picture of a phenomenon through subjective data and discovery-oriented approach, this paper’s focus of attention is not on generalization but on understanding the particulars of the issue under inquiry within a specific habitat. The setting is from a developing country, Turkey, in which, peace has always been a crucial topic of political and social discussions, especially in view of the current threats and challenges in the region. In other respects, raising generations who can speak at least a foreign language is another country-wide goal that the whole educational system undertakes. Foreign languages are considered to be the primary platforms to establish and maintain intended relations with other cultures and societies. Therefore, how peace is conceptualized in such a setting and how a foreign language teaching environment could add value to this conceptualization are highly important.

With this study, I, as a qualitative researcher and a practicing foreign language instructor at a higher education institution, intend to portray the role of foreign language teaching and learning processes in creating and developing critical awareness on peace or its eliminating and destructive effect, which is also a possible consequence when we consider cultural imperialism placed upon foreign language learners through some dominant languages and cultures around the world. In order to propose an in-depth investigation and a broader picture of the phenomenon, I follow a qualitative research tradition and use a critical analysis design. The main question to be answered through this paper is as follows: How can (or cannot) a foreign language learning setting become an agent to promote peace among its stakeholders? The paper consists of three parts based on the aforementioned question.

In the first section, the discussion is constructed on the basis of the data obtained from the interviews conducted with foreign language instructors, who are inquired about the way they define the concepts of peace, conflict, violence, and nonviolence; their commitment to the idea of peace both in and outside of their classrooms; the initiatives they take to disseminate peace in their social circle; the challenges and opportunities they encounter during their engagement with peace-building; the contribution of the language and culture they teach to this process, and so on. This section provides readers with a glimpse into the foreign language instructors’ position as peace activists.

In the second section, the data gathered from foreign language learners are presented through underlying themes and sample stories. They are inquired through focus-group interviews about their cognitions on peace, which means the way they believe in, know about, and understand from the contemporary idea of peace and the contribution of the language they learn to their cognitions. Using the opportunities in such settings, how they learn about, value, promote, protect, preserve, and sustain a culture of peace in their personal and public spheres are interpreted.

In the last section, the textbooks as a part of overt or covert curriculum, are analyzed and reported on their function. It is critical that foreign language teachers must have the appropriate tools through which they could combat cultural, religious, and ethnic polarization in communities as well as unilateral politicization of certain identities. Considering the fact that the tool through which the content is conveyed in a foreign language classroom is as crucial as the attitude of a teacher and the policy of an institution, I focus on the textbooks, in this study. Being an important aspect of learning and teaching processes and having undeniable effects on learners’ understanding, the textbooks could be significant agents either by promoting tolerance or by transfusing cultural imperialism. Accordingly, data analysis process is completed in three segments: image analysis; character analysis; and discourse analysis.

Under the light of all those in-depth data, the paper discusses the story of how a culture of foreign language learning could become a culture of peace; how the stakeholders define, describe, conceptualize, and imagine peace; and whether a foreign language become a facilitator or a barrier to peace-building initiatives.

Author

• Mustafa Ozturk, Hacettepe University