New Directions in Critical Peace and Human Rights Education: Centering Transformative Agency, Dignity and Decoloniality in Theory, Praxis, and Scholarship

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Over the past five decades, peace education and human rights education have moved out of the margins and have emerged distinctly and separately as global fields of scholarship and practice. While it was quite common for these formerly obscure fields to be somewhat peripheral to other more mainstream forms of education or scholarship (to the extent that some people have never heard of them), the terms “peace” and “human rights education” are no longer as fringe as they used to be. Promoted through multiple efforts, including through the United Nations (UN), civil society, grassroots educators, in preschool to grade 12 (p–12) educational settings, and in the academe, both of these fields consider content, processes, and educational structures that seek to dismantle various forms of violence, as well as move toward broader cultures of peace, justice, and human rights. Though these two fields have developed distinctly and separately, their growing presence in movements, scholarship, and educational settings has often raised questions not only about what each is but also about how they are distinct and similar. Moreover, there has been growing work in these fields on how they have developed on their own beyond their own normative foundations, but also to consider more critical and decolonial dimensions.

In this session, we examine several new directions in critical peace and human rights education theory, practice, and scholarship, and in particular consider the concepts and role of transformative agency, dignity, and decoloniality in particular contexts. As scholars whose work and teaching both critically engage these fields and grapples with these concepts, the panelists consider their distinctions and overlaps to frame the challenges and possibilities of implementing either peace and/or human rights education in diverse global sites and contexts. We take up these intersections to provide a bridge for those whose work rests at the nexus and view it as a launching point for ongoing robust critical engagement and work.

Collectively, the papers critically engage some of the theoretical underpinnings that bridge both fields (transformative agency, dignity, and decoloniality) to shed light on the possibilities, and challenges of implementing critical peace education and/or human rights education programs in diverse contexts and locales. To this end, the panelists, drawing on theories and audience participation, unpack these key ideas that are often associated with critical peace education and human rights theory, research, scholarship, and praxis in responding to three overarching questions:

(1) How do participants’ perspectives, identities, knowledge(s), experiences, histories, traditions, and contexts contribute to the ways in which the concepts of transformative agency, dignity, and/or decoloniality in critical peace education and human rights education are understood and conceptualized?

(2) How do larger cultural, political and economic forces and institutions that shape quotidian existence contribute or detract from the ways that critical peace and human rights education is contextually embodied, experienced, and/or practiced?

(3) How can practitioners and scholars re-think their efforts to engage in peace education research and praxis by resisting the totalizing and universalizing aspects of the field and considering the primacy of localized realities? In turn, how can this then shape global priorities?

As critical peace and human rights education becomes a more widely accepted and mainstreamed field, it is increasingly critical for scholars and practitioners to both interrogate how localized experiences both shape and challenge some of the normative and universalizing assumptions, discourses, and practices that frame the origins of the fields. By examining the ways in which schools, non-governmental organizations, and grassroots movements are reimagining education by centering concepts like transformative agency, dignity, and decoloniality, scholars and practitioners gain deeper insight into restructuring and improving education for a more equitable world. Further, in answering these questions, the panelists suggest through their theoretical, praxis-oriented and/or localized research ways to move the fields forward in alignment with the theme and sub-themes of the conference.

The session will open with the chair introducing the purpose of the panel and the panelists. Each of the five panelists will then take 12 minutes to present their research in relation to the overarching questions. The chair will then serve as a discussant and pose three discussion questions that put the papers in conversation with each other. The panelists, together with audience participants, will then discuss the implications of the research and large group discussion for the development and re-conceptualization of critical peace and human rights education, research, and praxis.

Sub Unit

• Peace Education SIG

Chair

• Maria Hantzopoulos, Vassar College

Individual Presentations

• Nourishing the Fields: The Role of Transformative Agency and Dignity as Groundwork for Educating for Peace, Justice, and Human Rights - Monisha Bajaj, University of San Francisco; Maria Hantzopoulos, Vassar College

• Decolonizing Peace Education Knowledge Production: Academic Publishing, Conference Structures, and Leadership Education - Edward Brantmeier, James Madision University

• Reframing School Culture through Project-Based Assessment Tasks: Cultivating Transformative Agency and Humanizing Practices in NYC Public Schools - Maria Hantzopoulos, Vassar College