Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Key pedagogical principles of Peace Education - My Reflections

As outlined in the handbook, the four Key pedagogical principles of Peace Education as identified by Virginia Cawagas (2007) are:
1. Holism
2. Values formation
3. Dialogue
4. Critical empowerment

For effective teaching of Peace education, all the four key pedagogical principles should actually be adopted and integrated into the teaching/learning process.

Classroom practice should be tailored to be an ever evolving dialogue based on a holistic approach to issues with the aim of guiding learners to develop critical consciousness and imbibe the values that lead to the entrenchment of a culture of peace.

In my classroom practice presently, I place a very high value on guiding learners to develop a sense of critical consciousness. It is very important to me for my students develop an attitude of asking “why” and be ready to reflect on the realities with a view to proffering alternative options to the reality on the ground.

Guiding them to acquire the capacity and commitment to question their realities, and search for possible alternatives is a task I value greatly.

By guiding students to develop critical consciousness, they will be motivated to critically scrutinize issues in their immediate society and thus be able arrive at clearer understanding of the realities. Upon reflection on the understanding gained they will be able to see if there are opportunities for positively transforming the realities and then be better empowered to solve identified problems.

In my view, every educator should acquire skills and knowledge that will make him/her able to awaken the students’ sense of critical consciousness and guide them further to utilize their powers of creative imagination to envision alternative futures to unacceptable current reality.

2 comments:

  1. Ibrahim,

    It is important to question the status quo. I think you are guiding students to do this. It would be interesting to do a before and after survey of your students to see how their views change over the course of their studies. I suspect there would be a big difference.

    Gwen

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  2. I agree with you, though i take an informal audit of their entry behaviours at start; I think creating a standard form to get their outlook to social issues at start and at the end of the training will help in assessment.

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This work by Ibrahim K. Oyekanmi (mallamibro@gmail.com) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.