Reflexive Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning in Peace and Conflict Studies

• Published date: 01 December 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/crq.21107
• Author: Jay Rothman
• Date: 01 December 2014

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© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. and the Association for Confl ict Resolution

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/crq.21107

ARTICLES

Re exive Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning

inPeaceand Con ict Studies

Jay Rothman

I suggest and illustrate how teaching students to become refl exively

self-aware is an empowering process and philosophy for both teaching

and learning about peace and confl ict. Developing tools and meth-

ods to encourage refl exivity—such as journals, exercises, and refl ex-

ive confl ict engagement in the classroom—can help students develop

a deep self-awareness about their own thoughts and refl ections and

greatly enhance education and its liberating potential. In addition

to learning critical thinking about the “reality out there,” students

and teachers will greatly benefi t by refl exive study of their own reac-

tions to confl ict and cooperation, empowerment, and peace in order

to gain deeper perspective and new skills for studied choice making

and modeling to others.

Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, published in 1970, has become a

foundational text of critical pedagogy.  is movement, in which teach-

ing and learning are collaborative activities of discovery and liberation,

is defi ned by another of its founders, Henry Giroux, as an “educational

movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students develop con-

sciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect

knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive action” (2010,

B15–B16).  is is relevant for confl ict resolution education in particular

since it “aims to empower students to exercise their own self-determination

I am grateful to Nofi t Amir for her very skillful editorial assistance, Susan Raines for her

support and encouragement, and my anonymous reviewers whose input greatly strengthened

my article.

110 ROTHMAN

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and respect and support the self-determination of others, crucial elements

for any democracy” (Hedeen 2005, 186).

Freire advocated an alternative to the “banking model” of education,

where the teacher “deposits” “usable” information into students’ heads

and then society withdraws that investment, in the service of perpetuating

the status quo. He called this alternative “problem-posing” education, in

which the teacher raises the consciousness (“conscientization”) of students

by exploring their life situations, constraints, and contexts as a probléma-

tique to be studied and overcome.  e educator and students together

engage in explorations about how current social structures may be oppres-

sive for those within them and explore what kinds of liberating alternatives

are available or may be fostered (see also Coy [2014] and his discussion

of “collective learning agreements” among students and teachers, and the

concept of “decentering the teacher” expanded by Hedeen [2005], who

also emphasizes the role of experiential learning in the confl ict resolution

classroom).

Freire’s approach, which was radical more than four decades ago when

it was introduced, is now a familiar approach in education and other fi elds

as well. In fact, John Paul Lederach (1997) enshrined it as the core of his

elicitive approach to confl ict transformation. As Lederach explains, only

by making explicit and eliciting from students and disputants their native

knowledge within their specifi c cultural contexts, needs, skills and defi -

cits can confl ict resolution educators or third parties become partners with

them. Such a process, educational by defi nition, is aimed at the discovery

and cocreation of models that emerge from the dialogue. Individual expe-

riences and their contexts, cultural, historical, and so forth, are regarded

as sources of insight for program or internal model development, with the

third party/educator as a catalyst, and not an expert in a particular external

model to be delivered. As Maiese (2004) describes, the aim of this elicitive

approach is to provide a highly participatory and empowering educational

process in which participants gain a better understanding of their own

confl ict situation. “Finally, the design and goals of the training process

are formulated by the participants, rather than dictated beforehand by the

trainer.”

Fostering a liberating educational experience that is consistent with

empowerment in terms of voice and participation is, I believe, a core ethi-

cal and procedural stance of our fi eld. Just as education is more of a process

than an outcome (though outcomes like degrees and professional training

are also important), so, too, confl ict engagement is more about the journey