Journal of Transformative Education, 3 (1): 33-56.
Current approaches to peace education tend to focus on specific issues or themes and leave many broader questions about the nature of peace and the means for its lasting establishment in human individual and collective life unanswered. Particularly in the contexts of injustice, violence and war, peace education programs that have the power to transform worldviews from a conflict- orientation to a peace-orientation are needed. Such a transformation requires an integrative view of peace as a psychosocial, political, moral and spiritual condition, and depends not merely upon reducing conflict but on actively creating unity. This paper reviews current trends in peace education and presents the case study of a unique primary and secondary school program called “Education for Peace” in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which has demonstrated transformative results among intrapersonal, interpersonal, inter-community and inter-institutional relations.
Current approaches to peace education tend to focus on specific issues or themes and leave many broader questions about the nature of peace and the means for its lasting establishment in human individual and collective life unanswered. Particularly in the contexts of injustice, violence and war, peace education programs that have the power to transform worldviews from a conflict- orientation to a peace-orientation are needed. Such a transformation requires an integrative view of peace as a psychosocial, political, moral and spiritual condition, and depends not merely upon reducing conflict but on actively creating unity. This paper reviews current trends in peace education and presents the case study of a unique primary and secondary school program called “Education for Peace” in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which has demonstrated transformative results among intrapersonal, interpersonal, inter-community and inter-institutional relations.