New Publications by Our Members 



​A special issue featuring CANDE members and interesting cases of democratic citizenship in societies emerging from conflict and undergoing political transition. "Education, conflict, and transitional justice,” Comparative Education, Volume 53, 2017.
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cced20/current

​Featuring: Michelle Bellino, Denise Bentrovato, Lynn Davies, Andrei Gomez-Suarez, Tricia Logan, Karen Murphy, Julia Paulson, Susan Shepler, Alan Smith, Felisa Tibbitts, Gail Weldon, James Williams, Elizabeth Worden
Bellino, Michelle J.(2017). Youth in Postwar Guatemala: Education and Civic Identity in Transition. Rutgers University Press 
https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/youth-in-postwar-guatemala/9780813587998
In the aftermath of armed conflict, how do new generations of young people learn about peace, justice, and democracy? Michelle J. Bellino describes how, following Guatemala’s civil war, adolescents at four schools in urban and rural communities learn about their country’s history of authoritarianism and develop civic identities within a fragile postwar democracy. Through rich ethnographic accounts, Youth in Postwar Guatemala, traces youth experiences in schools, homes, and communities, to examine how knowledge and attitudes toward historical injustice traverse public and private spaces, as well as generations. Bellino documents the ways that young people critically examine injustice while shaping an evolving sense of themselves as civic actors. In a country still marked by the legacies of war and division, young people navigate between the perilous work of critiquing the flawed democracy they inherited, and safely waiting for the one they were promised.
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Mitrayani, D., & Peel, R. D. (2017). Youth participation and leadership: Moving together towards peace education and sustainable development. In S. Singh & N. D. Erbe (Eds.), Creating a Sustainable Vision of Nonviolence in Schools and Society (pp. 200-221): Hershey, PA: IGI Global
The UN declared 2005-2014 as the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development that conveys the concept of balancing economic development with environment and social considerations. In addition to schools preparing and enhancing students for the work force, their learning has to instill a notion of living sustainably and participating towards the goals of global human survival. Thus a new movement where youth are engaged as a major stakeholder group in all policy development processes has been instigated internationally. This movement necessitates an education that enhances values such as
leadership, justice, respect, nonviolent communication, and collaboration. This chapter showcases two school programs, Play for Peace Clemente and University Lab School Hawai`i, that are responding to the challenge of developing both youth participation and leadership in school setting for sustainable peaceful Development.

​Catherine Vanner, Spogmai Akseer & Thursica Kovinthan (2017). Learning peace (and conflict): the role of primary learning materials in peacebuilding in post-war Afghanistan, South Sudan and Sri Lanka. Journal of Peace Education, 14 (1), 32-53,
​(DOI: 10.1080/17400201.2016.1213710)
Post-war education is usually considered a positive contributor to peacebuilding; however, it can also reinforce divisive perspectives. Textbooks and learning materials can be instrumental in maintaining or exacerbating existing inequalities. This paper uses case study literature reviews of Afghanistan, South Sudan and Sri Lanka to explore the ways in which primary learning materials extend existing challenges of post-war education and potentially create new ones. An analysis of the literature on learning materials from these countries reveals that textbook development and uses are intertwined with larger national and international political and social power structures. We draw from Bourdieu and Giroux to consider how learning materials contribute to the reproduction of cultures of hostility, violence, divisiveness and silence or to transformatory cultures of peacebuilding, inclusivity and critical thought. Our resulting conceptual lens highlights how education can take on the role of being a victim, accomplice or transformer of conflict – roles that are often overlapping. Each case study country is taking steps towards peacebuilding through their primary learning materials; however, there are many elements of the textbook design, development, production and distribution process in each country that also reinforce contributing factors for conflict​.

Bellino, M.J., Faizi, B., & Mehta, N. (2016). Finding a way forward: Conceptualizing sustainability in Afghanistan’s community-based schools. Journal on Education in Emergencies, 2(1), 11-41.
Community-based educational (CBE) models have gained recognition across diverse contexts for closing access gaps, leveraging local assets, and shaping costeffective and culturally relevant educational opportunities in marginalized communities. In protracted conflict contexts such as Afghanistan, CBE compensates for weak state capacity by cultivating community engagement and support. This article considers the impact of CBE in the voices of Afghanistan’s educational and community stakeholders, gained through interviews and observations with parents, teachers, students, educational officers, and school shuras (councils) across eight communities in two provinces. Against a backdrop of continued insecurity, resource shortages, and uncertain projections for future government and NGO support, conceptions of sustainability emerge as salient but poorly defined, and as lacking common understanding among stakeholders about the purposes and long-term prospects of CBE. We argue that the success of CBE models depends on how various actors define sustainability and what it is the model is seeking to sustain. The study underscores three dimensions of sustainability: (1) self-reported changed attitudes toward education, (2) decisions about student transitions from community to government schools, and (3) emergent indicators of community ownership over CBE. Across these measures of sustainable attitudes, actions, and community arrangements, quality education is positioned as a mechanism for long-term community commitment. However, increased community interest and capacity to sustain CBE is at odds with the current policy approach, which anticipates the eventual handover of all community-based schools to the government.​

Zyngier, David (2016). What future teachers believe about democracy and why it is important. Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, 22 (7), 782-804.(DOI:10.1080/13540602.2016.1185817)
This paper analyses pre-service education student perceptions and perspectives related to education for democracy in Australia. Using a critical pedagogical framework datum from an online survey, it presents both quantitative and qualitative responses of contrasting understandings of democracy. It begins by outlining the concepts of thick and thin democracy and why this is important in relation to contemporary debates about the state of civics and citizenship education, and then explains the conceptual framework of critical pedagogy and methodology. The datum analysed is discussed in relation to neoliberalism and indicates that the pre-service teachers in this study view democracy in a narrow or thin way that may impact on their classroom practice where they would be teaching about but not for democracy. A more critical and thicker understanding of democracy is suggested as essential if we desire our students to become active and transformative Citizens. 

​Bellino, M.J. (2016). So that we do not fall again: History education and citizenship in “postwar” Guatemala. Comparative Education Review, 60(1), 58-79.
This vertical case study applies a transitional justice approach to analyzing curricular reform, as intended, enacted, and experienced in the aftermath of Guatemala’s civil war. Drawing on ethnographic data, I juxtapose the teaching and learning of historical injustice in one urban and one rural classroom, examining how particular depictions of war are positioned as civic narratives for different identity groups, while set against the backdrop of particular ways of understanding the “postwar” period. This study illustrates how young people construct the role and relevance of a history of violence and authoritarianism in relation to their civic identity in a postauthoritarian democracy. It also illuminates how the educational sector addressed legacies of war and how these legacies have been reproduced and challenged through an unequal education system. 

Bellino, M.J. (2015). The risks we are willing to take: Youth civic development in “postwar” Guatemala. Harvard Educational Review, 85(4), 537-561.
In this article, Michelle J. Bellino explores contrasting approaches to civic education in two rural schools serving indigenous Maya youth in post–civil war Guatemala. Through comparative ethnography, she examines how youth civic pathways intersect with legacies of authoritarianism while young people shape their identity as members of historically oppressed groups. She suggests that student decisions about how and when to participate in civic issues function as a risk calculus, taking into consideration the costs and benefits of both participation and nonparticipation as well as the civic obligation to abstain or join communities in struggle. Although serving similarly impoverished communities hard-hit by state actors during the war and now struggling with issues of indigenous autonomy, both schools position daily experiences with injustice as an entry point for constructing youth citizenship. Beyond this shared experience of historical injustice and its ongoing effects, educators envision young peoples’ roles according to different risk structures. In this way, youth construct civic pathways while traversing between the potential for risk and reward, in part informed by their experiences in school. 
 
Bickmore, Kathy (2014). “Citizenship Education in Canada: ‘Democratic’ Engagement with Differences, Conflicts, and Equity Issues?” Citizenship Teaching and Learning 9(3).
Research on citizenship education in Canada illustrates five enduring themes, of interest to comparative educators.  First, citizenship education policy mandates carry divergent goals for ‘good’ citizenship. Second, questions of national and ethno-cultural identity and justice are prominent in Canadian curricular rhetoric, although achievement of mutual understanding and justice is elusive.  Third, some Canadian curricula apparently reinforce ignorance about the causes of global problems such as war.  Fourth, curriculum policy discourse emphasizes student-centred pedagogy for critical thinking, distinct from typical classroom practice.  Last, implicit citizenship education is embedded in daily patterns of discipline and conflict management, community service, and student roles.
 
Bickmore, Kathy & Parker, Christina (2014). “Constructive Conflict Talk in Classrooms: Divergent Approaches to Addressing Divergent Perspectives.” Theory and Research in Social Education 42(4), 291-335.
Dialogue about social and political conflicts is a key element of democratic citizenship education—advocated in scholarship but rarely fully implemented, especially in classrooms of ethnically and economically heterogeneous students.  Qualitative case studies describe contrasting ways two primary and two middle grade teachers in urban Canadian public schools infused conflict dialogue pedagogies into implemented curricula. The case studies illustrate a democratic education dilemma: Even in the classrooms of skilled and committed teachers, opportunities for recognition of contrasting perspectives and discussion of social conflicts may not necessarily develop into sustained democratic dialogue, nor interrupt prevailing patterns of disengagement and inequity.

Mitra, D., Bergmark, U., Brezicha, K., Kostenius, C., Maithreyi, R., Serriere, S. (Forthcoming). Ironies of democracy: Civic values and the construction of citizens in Sweden, India, and the United States. Citizenship Teaching and Learning.
Abstract: With relatively few comparative studies of civics curricula in diverse democratic
contexts and world regions, this paper considers how civic values are negotiated in national curricular policy texts. To explore the purposes of education and the construction of citizens in curricular documents, we layer two theoretical frameworks together—Biesta’s  (2009) framework examining the purposes of education and Westheimer and Kahne’s (2004) framework examining types of civic education.  Looking at curricular frameworks from Sweden, India, and the United States, we engaged qualitative content analysis to identify common themes of civic values across these nations: workforce preparation, positioning in society, and democratic questioning.  We find growing commonality of how ‘citizenry’ is increasingly being defined in terms of individual contributions to the larger enterprises of the nation and the global economy.
 
Tibbitts, F. (2015). Women’s Human Rights Education in Turkey: Feminist Pedagogy and Trainer’s Engagement in Social Change.  Journal of Peace Education. 
This article presents evidence of the links between human rights education and social change by analyzing the long-term effects on 88 trainers engaged in a non-formal adult training program sponsored by a women’s human rights group in Turkey, Women for Women’s Human Rights – New Ways. In this article, I show the transformative impacts of carrying out human rights education on the trainers themselves: in their identity; knowledge, skills, and attitudes; and behaviors in their family and in the workplace. This article extends the treatment of an emerging question within social change theory – that of the long-term influence on activists brought about by their very engagement in these activities. At the same time, because the activists are trainers associated with a human rights education program that infuses critical pedagogy with a feminist perspective, this qualitative case study provides the opportunity to explore ‘situated empowerment’ on trainers in both their personal and professional domains.
 
Tibbitts, F. (2015). Building a Human Rights Education Movement in the United States. In Katz, S. and Spero, A. (Eds.), Bringing Human Rights Education to U.S. Classrooms (pp. 3-14). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
This chapter presents a brief overview of the history of the HRE movement, both internationally and in the United States, as a preface for the case studies of this book. This book provides research-based examples of effective projects from elementary through higher education with a focus on a U.S. urban area.
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