Conference Agenda

The study explores the integration of art tools into peacebuilding education, emphasizing its potential to transform teaching methods within the context of conflict resolution and social justice. Grounded in foundational theories, such as Johan Galtung's "positive peace," this study will evaluate the role of visual, performing arts, and other creative tools as pedagogical tools that transcend linguistic and cultural barriers, fostering emotional healing and promoting constructive dialogue (Galtung, 1969).

The research looks to identify effective creative artistic tools for teaching concepts of peace and reconciliation to refugee and internally displaced children, as well as those affected by conflict in the context of Azerbaijan. The project will utilize an art-based intervention approach alongside participatory action research (PAR) methods, that incorporate some creative methods like zine books, theatrical techniques, and sculpting, to uncover students' understanding of peace and reconciliation. The aim is to overcome language barriers and cultural misunderstandings, which often lead to conflicts. By observing how children convey empathy and emotions non-verbally, the study seeks to explore alternative pathways to understanding and reconciliation. By employing creative co-creation methods, participants will take on the role of active creators rather than mere interviewees, allowing them to choose the topics they wish to explore and share while controlling the depth of their involvement.

This research will help to leverage innovative approaches to address social justice and promote equity and inclusion through effective partnerships. By offering insights into the potential of art-based peacebuilding education, it will contribute to the ongoing dialogue on reconciling tensions in education and fostering global citizenship. The study can help educators and policymakers advance peace through innovative and inclusive educational practices.

Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, Peace, and Peace Research. Journal of peace research, 6(3), 167-191. https://doi.org/10.1177/002234336900600301

The aim of this study is to explore stakeholder’s experiences of key benefits and challenges of multi-grade teaching and learning in one Irish primary school. The stakeholders included in this study are teachers, students, and parents / guardians. This qualitative study focused on gathering teacher’s (n=4) perspectives through semi-structured interviews, garnering student’s (n=16) experiences in interactive workshops and collecting parental (n=13) perceptions via an online anonymous questionnaire. Data was analysed using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Findings displayed a suite of both benefits and challenges to multi-grade teaching and learning. Benefits included educational benefits, social benefits and pedagogical benefits. Challenges were namely, organisational challenges, behavioural challenges, time challenges, and emotional challenges. The subsequent discussion of these themes allowed for recommendations for future research and reflection on the wider implication of the results in terms of policy and practice. This study aligns with the 21^st ISATT Biennial Conference theme of ‘Quality Teaching for a More Equitable World,’ with particular significance to the subtheme of research on equitable teaching practices. This study explores the world of multi-grade classrooms, an everyday reality for many children, beyond the single stream classroom (Mulryan-Kyne, 2004). Multi-grade education is a ubiquitous delivery of education which there remains a lack of awareness of, and which is underexamined in modern day educational research (Kalendar and Erdem, 2021).

References

Braun V., and Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3, pp. 77-101. DOI: 10.1191/1478088706qp063oa

Department of Education and Skills. (2016). Education Statistics Database.[online] Available: https://www.education.ie/en/Publications/Statistics/Education-Statistics-Database [accessed 1 November 2023].

Mulryan-Kyne, C. (2004). Teaching and learning in multigrade classrooms: what teachers say. The Irish Journal of Education, 331, pp. 5-19. DOI: https://www.erc.ie/documents/vol35chp1.pdf

Kalender, B. and Erdem, E., (2021). Challenges faced by classroom teachers in multigrade classrooms: A case study. Journal of Pedagogical Research, 5(4), pp.76-91. DOI: https://doi.org/10.33902/JPR.2021473490

The Erasmus+ “Constructing a Green Wave in VET – A New SDG Perspective” project, aligns with the priorities of the new Erasmus+ program for environmental sustainability and UN objective 4.7, which aims to guarantee that all students acquire the knowledge and skills which are necessary to promote sustainable development as well as global citizenship. This contribution focuses on some results of the project; focusing on how the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can be implemented in construction and education sector, University of Bari, in particular, had the commitment to elaborate a Pedagogical-didactic Model (PDM) to encompass Sustainability in Vet schools’ curriculum: as final output of the project, the creation of a common PDM across the European countries involved in the project, had the aims to explore and improve the integration of sustainable education in Professional and Technical Training (VET) contexts linking this need to the development of inner competencies of students: so the PDM bases its innovative character on one hand, stimulating the development of inner and critical skills, but also creative skills which are necessary to face the new challenges of sustainability, always placing students at the center of learning process; on the other hand, it offers an innovative teaching-model for teachers, aimed not only at the creation of new contents relating to sustainability but also at the development, in a metacognitive sense, of the pre-conditions that allow us to think and build sustainability, for both poles of the educational relationship, students and teachers. In this model the Inner Development Goals (IDGs) on one hand, the head-hands-heart framework on the other hand, are therefore addressed and developed, intended precisely as structural pre-conditions that futher allow the development of the skills of the Sustainable Development Goals.