How can teachers explore armed conflict and peacebuilding? The weight of news of contemporary armed conflict can be overwhelming. History can feel like an endless list of wars, with less time for perhaps the most important question: how is peace built? The study of conflict how peace is reached makes this more essential, and young people often call for it.
Wars have sides, so they’re definitely political. Teachers must be ‘well versed in ensuring a balanced approach to exploring political issues’ according to Education Scotland, (Curriculum for Excellence Briefing 14 2013). What does this look like in practice? How can teachers bring a mix of intellectual rigour, empathy and ethical engagement to the study of war past and present, at the personal and the macro scale?
How does armed conflict connect with other global citizenship themes like gender, cultural diversity and human rights? How can school communities respond times like Remembrance Day or Armed Forces Day an educative way?
Our courses are highly interactive, both to model the participatory global citizenship approach, and also so we can introduce activities and methodologies for use in the classroom. This course will make use of breakout rooms and simple digital participation tools (all necessary instructions will be given). It can be hard to participate fully on a phone or tablet, so we highly recommend you join the course on a desktop or laptop computer, with your microphone and video enabled.
If you have particular access needs, please contact diana@wosdec.org.uk so we can work together to create as positive an experience for you as we can.
We have designed this course to be engaging, relevant and thought-provoking. Please join the course in a reasonably quiet place if possible, and do what you can to bring your full participation and focus to the session.