Abstract
The International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma programme, an internationally recognised pre‐university curriculum, is currently offered by approximately 1500 schools in 120 countries. This article will analyse various dimensions of peace education in the IB Diploma programme, with particular reference to its peace and conflict studies course. This course has been a success in qualitative terms but has not managed to draw in large numbers of students. Ian Harris’ typology of peace education will be used to demonstrate how elements of peace education have found their way into the Diploma programme in other ways as well. It is argued that the IB Diploma programme’s commitment to peace education is mostly achieved through international education, but that the four other types of peace education (human rights education, development education, environmental education and conflict resolution education) are also available. By way of conclusion this article suggests how the peace education embedded in the Diploma programme can be made more explicit and more widely available for a larger number of IB Diploma students.
Notes
1. The figure of 31,249 refers to all students who were awarded a full Diploma. Figures for all candidates including fails are hard to obtain, as students can also opt for single‐subject certificates. In May 2006, a total of 72,170 candidates registered for at least one examination session. This includes retakes, single‐subject certificate candidates and other categories (IBO Citation2006a, 10). Data for 2007 was not yet available when this article went to press.