CALL FOR PAPERS

Comparative Education Review

Special Issue on “Education and Conflict/Post-Conflict Societies”

Guest Editors: Lynn Davies, University of Birmingham, UK

Chris Talbot, International Institute for Educational Planning-UNESCO

Intra- and inter-societal conflicts pervade the globe, with devastating effects on the men, women, and children who are the targets and the perpetrators of the physical and non-physical violence often associated with such conflicts. As a key human institution, education (both formal and non-formal) is implicated in such conflicts.  At times educational settings are sites in which (internally or externally initiated) violence occurs. At other times education is called upon to address the social and psychological needs of those who have experienced warfare and other violent conflict. Education can help students, teachers, and other community members to engage with ‘difference’, to develop their commitments and capacities to resolve conflicts through nonviolent means and to hold governments to account for their actions. Alternatively, the formal and hidden curriculum of educational programs can contribute to the problem by promoting negative views of the “other” and by encouraging violence as a strategy for dealing with conflict and as a solution to a problem.

This proposed special issue would include exemplars of the growing body of research designed to illuminate what is happening and how planning, policy, and action – by governments, multi-/bi-lateral agencies, and national/international nongovernmental organizations and by schools themselves – is contributing to or alleviating violent inter-group conflicts. It will also provide an opportunity to share the fruits of recent research and field experience on the planning and management of education systems during conflict and early reconstruction. In order to inform policy, the issue will focus particularly on research or evaluation on the impact of initiatives, and on accounts of the development of national policies on peace education or on education for social cohesion.  Papers are also welcomed on aspects of the changing international architecture of support to education in humanitarian settings and in situations of state fragility.

This special issue of the CER is scheduled to be published in November 2008. To be considered for publication, manuscripts should be submitted via email to the CER Editorial Office at cer@psu.edu by 30 November 2007, although earlier submission is encouraged. See the CER website (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/CER/instruct.html) for instructions in preparing manuscripts. The guest editors will read all submissions and send out for blind, external review those manuscripts deemed to be developed sufficiently to warrant such. Please address any questions you may have about this special issue to the CER managing editors at cer@psu.edu.