Developmentally appropriate peace education curricula

Abstract

Peace education has been offered to children for decades, but those curricula have been only minimally guided by children’s developmental stages and needs. In this article, the authors apply their research on children’s developmental understanding of peace along with peace education principles and Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory to present recommendations for educating children about peace at six developmental levels. Two sample lesson outlines dealing with communication skills and personal peace are provided, and implications for future research and practice in different contexts are discussed.

Keywords:

• Developmental levels
• curriculum
• preschool
• elementary school