Education and Reconciliation: Exploring Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations

Description

What is the relationship between education and reconciliation initiatives? Who encourages and enacts it and who discourages and detracts from it? Do reconciliatory educational practices offer any insight into the nature of reconciliation as a process? Drawing on international research in numerous countries, including Bosnia Herzegovina, Rwanda, South Africa, Jordan, Peru and the USA, the contributors consider, conceptually and empirically, the role of education in reconciling societies, groups and individuals divided by conflict. These case studies expand conceptual and empirical understandings of the understudied relationship between education and reconciliation and its potential for addressing and repairing the divisions of conflict. Each chapter contains a summary of the key points and issues within the chapter to enable easy navigation, key relevant and contemporary questions to encourage you to actively engage with the material and an annotated list of suggested further reading to support you to take your exploration further.

Julia Paulson is Lecturer in the School of Education at Bath Spa University, UK.

'A must-read for those working in the area of international education development. Paulson brings together a superb group of varied authors to help us gain better insights into the realities of post-conflict reconciliation practices and the (un)intended effects of these in diverse contexts worldwide.' Janet Shriberg, Assistant Professor of Professional Psychology, University of Denver, USA In Education and Reconciliation, Julia Paulson has assembled an impressive array of new and established voices to explore some of the most pressing themes in the study of conflict societies: how should we define and pursue 'reconciliation'; what impact does violence have on children, either as victims, perpetrators, bystanders or the next generation left to deal with the legacies of conflict; and how can education permit a direct confrontation with the trauma of the past while safeguarding against future harm. Combining theoretical precision and in-depth analyses of case studies, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in the role that pedagogy and historical narratives play in fomenting, redressing and preventing conflict. * Phil Clark, Lecturer in Comparative and International Politics, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK, and convener of Oxford Transitional Justice Research * 'The strength of this collection of papers extends its importance far beyond educational research circles. Paulson and colleagues lays out a cogent case that reconciliation is built on much ambiguity and many assumptions that ultimately come to hamper, even exacerbate, smouldering conflict situations around the World. It is rare to find insight from educational research that so powerfully resonates in so many other conflict-related arena.' Jeremy Rappleye, Reader in Comparative Education, University of Tokyo, Japan