Critical peace education and critical hope: co-researching with middle school students in India to imagine possibilities for social change

ABSTRACT

An existing culture of conflict tends to shape practices within schools, which often maintain and in turn, contribute towards perpetuating stratifications at the societal level. Through this study, the author seeks to challenge this culture of conflict by creating a pedagogical space and facilitating possibilities of collective thinking, relationality, and action, with a focus on nurturing a culture of peace. With a goal of gaining insight into how middle school students from two school sites in New Delhi, India, are embodying and interacting with notions of peace and conflict as they make meaning of their social worlds, the author conducts a youth participatory action research (YPAR), which is complemented with semi-structured interviews. A total number of 12 participants collectively engage in a YPAR process across 13 virtual sessions, which were held on a bi-weekly basis. Guided by a critical peace education and critical hope framework, the author examines a ‘moment’, which reveals complexities around how pedagogies of critical hope can engage young people in affective, ethical, and political sensibilities to imagine possibilities for social change.

KEYWORDS:

• Peace
• conflict
• youth participatory action research
• critical peace education
• critical hope
• social change

Acknowledgments

The author extends deep gratitude to the young people who volunteered to participate and made this study possible. The author would like to thank Dr. Celia Oyler and Dr. Laura Smith for their incredible guidance and insight.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The author confirms that the data supporting the findings of this study can be made available on request.

Notes

1. Indirect or structural violence is violence that exists within the structure, manifested as unequal power or resources and results in unequal life chances (Galtung 2010).

2. ‘The deliberate and mindful simultaneous bodyminded engagement of the self with both the inner and outer environments’ with embodied learning being understood ‘as the deliberate use and recognition of multimodal bodymind activities, (experiences) and strategies to facilitate shifts in perspectives, perceptions, paradigms, behaviour, (values, beliefs) and actions’ (Munro 2018, 5).

3. ‘Mutual or reciprocal action or influence’ (Hornbæk and Oulasvirta 2017, 5041).

4. In this study, ‘privileged youth are those who benefit from systemic, unearned advantage through economic class, social class’ and ‘specifically in the Indian context, caste’ (3).

5. Emanating from the social-ecological framework (Bronfenbrenner 1979), meso level indicates organizations and communities, and the macro level includes existing social systems, structures, ideologies, and policies.

6. Type of violence that is committed by an actor (Galtung 1969).

7. Aspects of cultures ‘that can be used to justify or legitimize direct or structural violence’ (Galtung 1990, 291).

8. Critical approaches to peace education aim to empower learners as transformative change agents who critically engage with and analyze power dynamics and intersectionalities across class, gender, religion, geography, sexual orientation, race, ability/disability, and other forms of stratification (Brantmeier and Bajaj 2013; Freire 1970).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kamiya Kumar

Kamiya Kumar is completing a Ph.D. in Peace Education at Teachers College Columbia University. She holds an Ed.M. in Curriculum and Teaching from Teachers College Columbia University and an M.Sc. in Social and Cultural Psychology from London School of Economics. Her current research focuses on education for peace and participatory action research across international contexts.