Peacebuilding in Language Education

Innovations in Theory and Practice

Rebecca L. Oxford, María Matilde Olivero, Melinda Harrison, Tammy Gregersen, Rebecca L. Oxford, María Matilde Olivero, Melinda Harrison, Tammy Gregersen

• Editorial: Multilingual Matters
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781788929813
• Categoría: Langues et linguistique
• Categoría: Enseignement des arts du langage

This innovative, much-needed book shares powerful wisdom and practical strategies to help language teachers, teacher educators and peace educators communicate peace, contribute to peace and weave peacebuilding into classrooms and daily life. The clear, six-part Language of Peace Approach underlies more than 50 creative activities that can promote peacebuilding competence in secondary and post-secondary students, current and prospective educators and community members outside of academia. Chapters span the spectrum from cross-cultural peace education to the positive psychology of peace, from nonverbal peace language to transformative language teaching for peace, and from the needs of language learners to the needs of language educators. The book makes a unique and valuable contribution to the discussion of how we can live together peacefully in a changing world.

Section IV

Applying Peacebuilding through Positive Psychology, Peace Linguistics and Peace Language

11Acting Locally to Integrate Positive Psychology and Peace: Practical Applications for Language Teaching and Learning

Tammy Gregersen and Peter D. MacIntyre

12From Hate Speech to Empathy: Lessons for Language Educators and Society

Rebecca L. Oxford

13Applying Peace Linguistics: What Peacebuilders Can Learn from the Languages of Hurt, Hate and Harm

Andy Curtis and Rebecca L. Oxford

14Exploring Peace Language: Hope, Help and Harmony

Rebecca L. Oxford and Andy Curtis

11Acting Locally to Integrate Positive Psychology and Peace: Practical Applications for Language Teaching and Learning

Tammy Gregersen and Peter D. MacIntyre

While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.

Francis of Assisi

Viewing peace through a positive psychology lens transforms the pivotal question from ‘What prevents peace?’ to ‘What invites peace?’ We frequently imagine peace as the absence of conflict, aggression and inequality, but not necessarily as a dynamically emerging phenomenon of a sociocultural context which embraces the principles and actions that make peace possible. This chapter explores the potential for language educators and their learners to collaborate in the creation of the conditions by which individuals, communities, cultures and nations can experience enduring peace. We propose that hopeful, positive motivations and practices are critical to the solution, offering ways to transform how individuals and communities of language teachers and learners work cooperatively from inside their classrooms, their borders and beyond to propagate cultures of peace.

We begin this chapter by venerating the words of two inspiring peace-builders who capture the tenor we would like to set for our fusion of language learning, teaching, peace and human well-being. Nelson Mandela and Malala Yousafzai, both Nobel Peace Prize winners, not only embody passionate dedication to reconciliation and liberty but also embrace the importance of language learning and education. For Mandela, knowing another language was a means of connecting with others, especially his prison guards: ‘If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart’ (Garimendi, 1996: vi). For Malala, education was the means through which peace could be achieved: ‘If you want to end the war then instead of sending guns, send books. Instead of sending tanks, send pens. Instead of sending soldiers, send teachers’ (Falk, 2013: 1). Peace and well-being seem inextricably linked to language and education.

Nowhere is the link between peace, language and education more eloquently addressed than in peace psychology and positive psychology. While the two disciplines have worked independently toward defining their respective fields, coordination could be an advantage because the combination of peace psychology and positive psychology potentially ‘… represent[s] a powerful force for building better societies’ (Cairns & Lewis, 2003: 143). However, researchers in positive psychology and positive peace have been developing parallel but most often separate approaches to defining the fields in which they operate. In both areas, researchers had been unsatisfied with conceptualizations of their disciplines based on ‘absence of …’ or deficit definitions. Just as peace is not simply the absence of conflict and violence, psychological health is not simply the absence of mental illness. Deficit-oriented definitions can be set aside in favor of exploring ways to represent the positive nature of a phenomenon without necessarily viewing it as the opposite of dysfunction. To this end, positive peace researchers have sought to focus on how to actively build peace and social justice rather than concentrating only on how to prevent or eliminate violence (Gibson, 2011). Similarly, positive psychologists moved away from psychology’s familiar focus on human disorders and mental illness (What’s gone wrong?) to instead balance the research agenda with studies on how humans can live more fulfilling lives (What goes right?) (Peterson, 2006; Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Peace psychology and positive psychology share similar large-scale goals yet have developed rather independently from each other, with a relationship, where it exists, best described as complex (Cohrs et al., 2013). The purpose of the present chapter is to consider the gains made in both disciplines and apply them to enhancing peacebuilding in a specific domain: the teaching of English as an additional language.

Language teachers, particularly those of English, often cross borders during their careers and are in some measure agents of international harmony as they interact with learners who will in turn cross linguistic and cultural boundaries. Teachers’ influence on learners – including migrants, sojourners and refugees – can be profound at times of vulnerability and/or transition in learners’ lives. Hence, language teachers can affect their students’ adaptation and adjustment to new communities. We begin this chapter by clarifying how the addition of positive to the terms psychology and peace transforms each of the concepts. Next, we explore the intersection of peace and positive psychology. The discussion then turns to the practicalities and opportunities of the language teaching context, where we adopt a distinctly local approach in presenting three studies we have conducted which, we argue, represent viable, specific and practical ways of integrating positive psychology tenets into language learning and teaching. We conclude by outlining detailed activity instructions for interventions found in the three studies with specific adaptations for bringing together TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) classroom activities which simultaneously tap into both positive psychology and positive peace.

What is Positive Peace?

Rather than asking questions such as ‘How do we eliminate conflict, violence and aggression?’, positive peace asks instead, ‘What do we need for peace to flourish?’ According to Davies-Vengoechea (2003: 11), ‘If peacemakers simply target violence, then they may remain oblivious to the real issues of peace’. Over 50 years ago Galtung (1969) contrasted negative peace as the absence of violence and positive peace as the presence of social justice. In outlining the field of peace psychology, Christie et al. (2001) said that:

(p)eace psychology seeks to develop theories and practices aimed at the prevention and mitigation of direct and structural violence. Framed positively, peace psychology promotes the nonviolent management of conflict and the pursuit of social justice, what we refer to as peacemaking and peacebuilding, respectively. (Christie et al., 2001: 7, emphasis added)

The authors suggested that, on the one hand, peacekeeping activities tend to be reactionary, seeking to reduce and/or prevent violence through non-violent means; peacebuilding activities, on the other hand, can be tied to a proactive pursuit of social justice, also through non-violent means. (See Chapter 1 for clearer distinctions and with applications to teaching.) Despite the potentially important distinctions underlying discourse about peace, the meaning of peace as a construct is often not actively defined or interrogated (Gibson, 2011). A contextually appropriate conceptualization of peace is necessary so that we know what we are striving for. Such clarity is appreciably facilitated by thinking beyond the circumstances necessary to prevent or eliminate confrontation or aggression in order to focus on what peace is, instead of what it is not. Framing the goals of positive peacebuilding as something to be added or achieved makes evaluating outcomes easier than striving for the absence of violence, conflict, etc., which is difficult to assess.

Although many authors take a broad view of peace versus conflict, the two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Within a given context, be it international, national, regional, municipal, local or even within a family, peace and conflict co-exist. Peace co-occurs with conflict, and conflict occurs within peace, in different proportions across time and contexts. With this dynamic mix in mind, a peacebuilder’s goal might then be to create more opportunities for positive actions which also may reduce the frequency of conflicts and aggressive actions. There is an argument to be made that any action can be interpreted in multiple ways. It is not easy to reconcile phrases such as ‘fighting for peace’ or ‘just wars’ with actions that clearly are peacebuilding. Peace psychology, therefore, emphasizes peace by peaceful means (Galtung, 1969), a non-violent approach to fostering harmonious actions and relationships.

As active social creatures, we maintain interpersonal, intergroup, intercultural and international relationships with others. Such interconnectedness means that the behavior of one impacts the lives of all, weaving our deeds and non-deeds into an intricate web of causal relationships that link individuals, groups, cultures and nations from across the globe (Davies-...