Voluntary non-formal teacher professional learning for democratic peacebuilding citizenship education: A participatory approach

Abstract

This article presents a six-session course the author developed as an integral part of a doctoral research to explore two small groups of teachers’ initial understandings of democratic peacebuilding citizenship through eliciting their narratives of practice and their emerging understandings after voluntarily participating in this non-formal professional learning initiative. Another aim of the study was to explore how their involvement in the course facilitated their own professional learning. Teacher participants were from different private schools in two relatively contrasting contexts, one in the Greater Cairo Area in Egypt and one in the Greater Toronto Area in Canada. This course sets an exemplary participatory approach to inform future research in teacher professional learning for democratic peacebuilding citizenship education in post-conflict zones, societies transitioning out of violent conflict and relatively democratic societies.