Learning Pedagogies and Peace Education: an exploratory study of decolonisation in South Africa and Uganda

Aims

Peace education is a vital tool for addressing conflict in Africa, but pedagogies and curricula are embedded in a wider liberal peacebuilding paradigm founded on Euro-centric values, principles and method.

This project is investigating how far contextually sensitive learning design, spearheaded by The Open University, can be used to develop decolonial peace education pedagogy in South Africa and Uganda.

Focusing on areas of forced displacement or refugee intake, beneficiaries will include refugees and migrants from neighbouring countries.

Investigators

Parvati Raghuram, Open University (Principal Investigator)  
Craig Walker, Open University

Funding

This project is funded through The Open University’s internal top-up funding for the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), as part of our work to support the UK’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitment. 

Summary

South Africa is host to over half a million refugees and asylum seekers, and their arrival has led to significant conflicts between local communities and foreign nationals. 

Peace education has fostered cross cultural engagement in communities, to reduce conflict and for empowering locals, but few educational institutions have incorporated these methods.

Uganda currently has around 1.3 million refugees and is renowned for its progressive policies towards refugees, but this has led to conflict with hosting communities, and peace education suffers from a lack of resources. 

This project aims to test the link between peace education and learning design through networking with users of peace education in these two countries, in order to create a tool for decolonised peace education.

The testing is taking place in educational settings where local population and refugees interact, and subsequently in a refugee camp setting.

More information

The project builds on two current grants: an ESRC-Newton funded grant, Facilitating equitable access and quality education for development: South African International Distance Education and AHRC-funded research (in South Africa and Uganda) that is exploring the role of youths as agents of peace.

Contact

Parvati Raghuram