Teaching Peace and Conflict: The Multiple Roles of School Textbooks in Peacebuilding

This book illustrates the multiple roles of textbooks as victim, transformer, and accomplice to conflict by introducing the Intersecting Roles of Education in Conflict (IREC) framework for use in the research, development, production, distribution, and dissemination of textbooks and learning materials. The framework illustrates these three potentially overlapping roles by mapping the complex educational contexts of conflict-affected societies and considering how textbooks, learning materials, and education systems more broadly may simultaneously operate within these various roles. Country case studies from Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East are used to analyze primary and secondary school textbook development, content, and application from a variety of approaches that articulate conflict as protracted and/or socio-political violence. The breadth of case studies shows how conflict discourse circulates in educational systems and materials in a wide range of contexts, indicatingthat the complexity of the relationship between textbooks and conflict is not unique to one culture, geographic region, or type of conflict.

Catherine Vanner is an Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations at the University of Windsor. Her research uses qualitative and participatory methods to examine the relationship between gender, violence, and education in North American and Sub-Saharan African contexts. Her current research analyzes teacher and student experiences on education about gender-based violence in Canada and is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She has worked as Postdoctoral Fellow at McGill University and as Education Advisor for Plan International Canada and the Canadian International Development Agency (now Global Affairs Canada). She holds a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Ottawa and a M.A. in International Affairs from Carleton University.

Spogmai Akseer has over 16 years of experience working in the field of educational development and research in Canada and internationally focusing on gender and conflict. She has worked as a consultant with UNICEF and UNESCO on various educational initiatives to improve educational equity and equality in the Global South, particularly in conflict-affected environments. Recently she supported UNESCO-IIEP in the development of a continental report examining Sustainable Development Goal 4 and the African Union’s Continental Education Strategy for Africa. Previously, Spogmai managed a USAID-funded project to help develop new graduate degree programs, as well as Registrar and professor at the American University of Afghanistan. In these roles, she worked closely with the Ministry of Higher Education of Afghanistan to develop a national quality assurance and accreditation framework, as well as a graduate education policy framework. Presently, Spogmai is working on the implementation and monitoring of the Ministry of Education’s anti-oppression and anti-racism directives across over 250 elementary and secondary schools in Ontario, Canada. She has a PhD in Education and Comparative, International Development Education from the University of Toronto. 

Thursica Kovinthan Levi is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow and lecturer at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. Her current research focuses on trauma-informed pedagogies for integration and reconciliation in refugee education. This research builds on her doctoral dissertation examining the interface between gender, education, and conflict in fragile contexts, focusing on Sri Lanka. She has worked and conducted research in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Central America with various NGOs and as a research consultant. Thursica is also an educator with the Toronto District School Board, where she teaches children with refugee experiences. She has worked as an Education Policy Analyst at Global Affairs Canada and Part-time Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa. Thursica holds a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Ottawa and a M.A in Child Studies and Education from OISE.