USING CONFLICT MAPPING TO FOSTER PEACE-RELATED LEARNING AND CHANGE IN SCHOOLS

Abstract

South African societies, including learners in primary and secondary schools, experience high levels of violent conflict. The lack of interventions in terms of peace education and peace building is cause for concern. Driven by an interest to build educators’ capacity and agency to become agents of change in the face of growing conflict and violence, this article discusses a mapping project which gets educators to explore their schools using a participatory process and to plan appropriate interventions in response. It considers how Freirian-inspired critical reflection and dialogical learning can be used to stimulate peace education and peace building in schools.

Keywords

• conflict mapping
• peace education
• peace action
• critical reflection
• dialogue