Critical ambivalence in peace education & reconciliation workshops: Resistances and transformations

The presentation is based on a study that examines a peace education intervention in teacher professional development in Cyprus and argues for the value of creating spaces for ambivalent emotions to be acknowledged and critically discussed in peace education and reconciliation activities. The study draws from literature on reconciliation pedagogies and looks at peace and reconciliation as everyday activities adopting an analytic perspective from linguistic ethnography. Following a primary school teacher over the period of eight months in peace education workshops and in her classroom before and after the workshops, we trace critical moments that seem to have an impact on teacher’s thoughts and emotions in relation to conflict and reconciliation. Analysing extracts of interaction both from the workshops as well as from her classroom, we show her struggle to cope with reconciliatory ideas and the dominant conflict ethos, pointing to possibilities for change but also resistances and limitations. The results of this study have implications for teacher education and reconciliation pedagogies. They point to the need to foster critical ambivalence by providing opportunities for teachers to acknowledge and discuss ambivalent emotions and their consequences on teaching practices. We argue that these kinds of activities allow for a type of political socialization that is not part of the dominant conflict ethos in formal education and have the potential to influence change in everyday classroom practices, which is critical in making the reconciliation process successful.