Teachers and peacebuilding: A systematic literature review

Dr Lindsey Horner

Senior Lecturer in Education Studies
Bath Spa University

5:30pm – 7:00pm, 22^nd February 2017
Room: 731
UCL Institute of Education (20 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AL)

This presentation reports of the findings of a systematic and extensive literature review on teachers and peacebuilding conducted as part of the Research Consortium on Education and Peacebuilding, a collaboration between the University of Sussex, the University of Amsterdam and Ulster University and funded by UNICEF and the ESRC.

Focusing on teachers and their role in peacebuilding the presentation will map existing literature to shed insight on teacher identity, roles and agency in conflict affected areas, relating this to the project’s orientating framework of a just peace, drawing on conceptions of social justice.  Exploring the debates around, for example, educational outcomes, accountability, governance and teacher education it asks what role teachers, as key agents in education systems, have in promoting peace, social justice, reconciliation and mitigating violence. The presentation will also highlight some of the dilemmas and contradictions in the literature and field, acknowledging the double-sided nature of teacher agency which can equally promote or obstruct peace and the complexities of the contexts in which they work.

Dr Lindsey Horner is an academic and researcher in the field of Education and International Development, specialising in critical peace education and participatory research. She obtained her PhD from the University of Bristol in 2011, which explored critical peace education as the interactions of a multifarious understanding of peace and practices to facilitate moving these understandings forward (the work of translating peace) in conflict effected communities in Mindanao. The commitment to social justice, ethics and participant representation found in her seminal research form the foundation of her research commitment and driving motivation behind her research trajectory to date, which has seen me progress onto contributions to research projects exploring the theoretical resources, processes and benefits of co- designed/constructed/produced research and the role of teachers in peacebuilding.

She is currently a senior lecturer in International and Global education at Bath Spa University where she continues to develop these interests.