Developing context-specific peace education initiatives with local communities: lessons from Bolivia

ABSTRACT

Peace education is often carried out without being appropriately adapted to the contexts in which it takes place and rarely involves those most affected by the work in the design and planning of their own initiatives. This article reports on an original participatory action research project designed to contextualise a peace education initiative with local communities in Bolivia. It draws on fieldwork, including interviews and focus groups with policymakers, educators, and students, to show how local actors, including students, were involved in influencing what peace education should look like for them, focussing on its purpose, pedagogy, and content. Lessons learned are also discussed. The case study is offered within a larger context of how the international community can work with the direct beneficiaries to co-develop peace and education-related initiatives that are responsive to the needs of the particular groups and contexts they are trying to affect.

KEYWORDS:

• Peace education
• contextualisation
• participatory action research
• international education
• international-local collaboration
• Bolivia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For a more in-depth discussion of the programme, see Gittins (2017, 136–140).

2. For a more in-depth discussion of PAR in the fields of peace education and peace and conflict studies, see Gittins (2019).

3. The author was deliberate to refer to the Bolivian actors involved in the study as research collaborators and to the work they did together as research collaboration.

4. Whenever quoting from an interview, focus group, or other transcribed materials, the (research activity number, type of actor, and last name) are referred to after each. The number corresponds to the specific research activity. EL refers to elite-level actors from the Ministry of Education and the United Nations. ML refers to mid-level actors from think tanks, foundations, non-profit, or university settings. GL refers to grassroots-level actors who in this study are the students. Finally, the last name corresponds to the specific person being quoted. When there are multiple names being quoted, people are listed in alphabetical order by their second name.

5. Double quotes are used for exact words. Single quotes are used to paraphrase what several people said.

6. UNIR’s work in the main focusses on conflict analysis and a culture of peace in Bolivia and Latin America in general.