This work is intended for scholars and students interested in issues of peace education, reconciliation, and coexistence from several disciplines including social and political psychology, communication, education, political science, sociology, and philosophy.

The rise of peace education both in scholarship and in practice has yielded numerous documents, websites, and publications with often divergent perspectives on what the field is, does, and means. The Encyclopedia of Peace Education provides a comprehensive overview of the scholarly developments in the field to date, so as to provide a common denominator for the various actors involved in advancing peace education internationally. Thus, this edited volume serves as an essential reference guide that traces the history and emergence of the field, highlights foundational concepts, contextualizes peace education practice across international and disciplinary borders, and suggests new directions for peace educators. From core conceptual perspectives to the moral and spiritual foundations of the field to the role of the United Nations, the Encyclopedia grounds peace education in a solid theoretical and practical framework through the writings of the field’s most renowned scholars. This volume will target undergraduate and graduate students as well as scholars and practitioners working in international and non-governmental organizations in the field of peace education.

Whether formally incorporated into curriculum and teacher training or informally integrated in contexts such as state or NGO initiatives dealing with resolving social, ethnic, and religious conflicts, peace education is increasingly recognized as a critical component in addressing violence in contemporary plural societies. Peace education can constructively undertake a reframing of historical narratives while inspiring practical community activities. An important, but insufficiently studied and theorized aspect of peace education is the role of religion. The challenge to peace education in today’s globalized, diverse, mobile, and religiously pluralistic world is to be able to take both complex global and distinctive local situations into account. The contributions to this integrative collection of essays provide exactly these local and global perspectives on the state of peace education and its relationship to religion across pedagogy and curriculum, state policies, and activism within societies on the front lines of resolving internal conflicts, whether historical or recent, that often reflect aspects of religious identities.

This special issue of the Peabody Journal of Education provides a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in peace education reform. School reforms based upon principles of peace education have in common a belief in the power of peace to create a positive learning climate in schools and to address the problems of violence in the broader culture. A peace education strategy for improving school productivity rests upon three main assumptions: 1. Violence contributes to the poor performance of many students. 2. Adults in school settings need to address problems created by violence in order for schools to improve. 3. Anxieties that make it hard for students to master traditional subject matter can best be addressed by a comprehensive peace education strategy that makes school a safe place to learn and provides students with knowledge about alternative nonviolent ways to resolve conflicts. Peace building reforms go beyond responding to immediate forms of violence that may be overwhelming students and teachers to promoting positive images of peace through the study of nonviolence. Written by established experts in the field of peace education from six different countries, this collection of articles not only represents a wide variety of peace education practices from different corners of the globe, but it also represents varying academic perspectives. Educators can play a key role in helping human societies progress toward more sustainable ways of living by implementing peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peace building strategies in school programs. Peace education reforms point to a new way of thinking about schools as vehicles for promoting a peace culture through insights offered by nonviolent theory.

This volume investigates how peace education can contribute to unfold collective and individual potentials for peace and conflict transformation. It explores how to cultivate a relational process that honours the interconnectedness of educators, students, researchers and participants in all their human faculties. This includes acknowledging not only the rational, but also the embodied, emotional, mental and spiritual dimensions, in their complexity and in their ongoing, dynamic transformations. Motivated by the possibilities and challenges involved in this process, this book explores the nexus between transrational peace philosophy, elicitive approaches to conflict transformation and peace education. The first part discusses the transrational peace philosophy and locates it within a broader field of peace education, while the second part reflects on how transrational perspectives are tapped into within peace education approaches. In total, eight researchers and practitioners engage productive tensions that unfold in different geographical spaces, in the classrooms, and within and between us through embodied, affective, societal and transpersonal lenses. Transrational Perspectives in Peace Education encourages both researchers and practitioners to experiment with and engage the multifaceted potentials that are involved in transrational perspectives within peace education. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Peace Education.

Spirituality, Religion, and Peace Education attempts to deeply explore the universal and particular dimensions of education for inner and communal peace. This co-edited book contains fifteen chapters on world spiritual traditions, religions, and their connections and relevance to peacebuilding and peacemaking. This book examines the teachings and practices of Confucius, of Judaism, Islamic Sufism, Christianity, Quakerism, Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, and of Indigenous spirituality. Secondly, it explores teaching and learning processes rooted in self discovery, skill development, and contemplative practices for peace. Topics in various chapters include: the Buddhist practice of tonglen; an indigenous Hawaiian practice of Ho’oponopono for forgiveness and conflict resolution; pilgrimage and labyrinth walking for right action; Twelve Step Programs for peace; teaching from a religious/spiritual perspective; narrative inquiry, Daoism, and peace curriculum; Gandhi, deep ecology, and multicultural peace education in teacher education; peacemaking and spirituality in undergraduate courses; and wisdom-based learning in teacher education. Peace education practices stemming from wisdom traditions can promote stillness as well as enliven, awaken, and urge reconciliation, connection, wisdom cultivation, and transformation and change in both teachers and students in diverse educational contexts. In various chapters of this book, a critique of competition, consumerism, and materialism undergird the analysis. More than just a critique, some chapters provide both conceptual and practical clarity for deeper engagement in peaceful action and change in society. Cultural awareness and understanding are fostered through a focus on the positive aspects of wisdom traditions rather than the negative aspects and historical complexities of violence and conflict as result of religious hegemony.

First Published in 1996. The current world order poses new challenges to the theory and practice of peace education. Drawing on data gathered from around the world, Burns and Aspeslagh focus on how peace is presented in formal and informal educational settings and what effects ideologies have in shaping that presentation. The book views peace education in the context of education about other major social and political issues and in a variety of geopolitical settings, exploring factors that affect the generation, selection, organization, transmission, and evaluation of knowledge for peace. Following a review of major approaches to policy and praxis in peace education, the editors draw on original research to offer interpretations based on pragmatic, normative, and conceptual approaches to the individual, the state, and the role of political literacy. The use of a comparative educational framework that goes beyond curriculum studies and descriptive case studies presents a perspective that is innovative, and timely. The volume includes both bibliography and index.

Nigeria, a country under a military regime for several years, transitioned to a civilian regime in May 1999. Since this change, violent conflicts between Christians and Muslims have continued to erupt. They constitute one of the gravest dangers facing Nigeria, a country with a population of 189 million people. What have Nigerian religious leaders done about this situation, especially in educational circles? Have they received formal educational training to understand the causes of this violence and especially how to provide alternatives for more peaceful relations within Nigeria? Does the current educational system in Nigeria provide the main ingredients for the promotion of a culture of peace? The absence and neglect of interreligious peace education as part of a peace education core program and the lack of an interreligious curriculum for peace education in the training of religious leaders are the two problems contributing towards the lack of effectiveness of religious leaders in promoting less violent and more peaceful living. The solution to the problem is proposed in this book entitled Interreligious Curriculum for Peace Education in Nigeria. The book develops a one-year curriculum, building on Yoruba, Islamic & Christian conceptions of peace, and teaches how to create safe, caring, spiritual, peaceful and successful interfaith relationships between all Nigerian religious communities. In the long term, the book helps to educate religious leaders to contribute, in themselves and with the help of their respective religious communities, to reducing the growing religious violence in Nigeria.

This book presents commentaries by a leading international group of peace education scholars and practitioners concerning Reardon’s peace education theory and intellectual legacy. The guiding question throughout the book is: How can her foundational work be used to advance the theory and practice of peace education? In an attempt to find answers, the contributing authors explore three general areas of inquiry: (1) Theoretical Foundations of Peace and Human Rights Education; (2) Feminism and the Gender Perspective as Pathways of Transformation Toward Peace and Justice; and (3) Peace Education Pedagogy and Practices. A contemplative commentary by Reardon herself rounds out the coverage

Economics of the International Financial System offers an illuminating, engaging and lucid account of the working of 21st-century global political economy. From a macroeconomic perspective, it explores how major capitalist economies are closely integrated with each other in that none can remain unaffected by economic events around the globe. The book is one of the first in its genre to examine: the origin and relevance of international money as a concept and phenomenon; the structure of various money markets; the nature and functioning of major international financial institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD); and the dynamics of the new world financial system that emerged after the demise of Bretton Woods system. This will form an essential reading for students and scholars of international monetary economics, international corporate finance, researchers, policymakers, bankers and financial executives.