Negotiating a locally relevant peace education curriculum for Bougainville

Abstract

Bougainville is a post conflict society. A continued peaceful future for Bougainville can only be secured if its development is based upon politically, economically, socially and ecologically justpractices. The introduction of a peace curriculum is one of many methods to achieve this goal. To help facilitate these equitable practices, the United States Institute for Peace funded a project toenable the development of a peace curriculum for Bougainville. The paper describes a dialogicprocess with local education stakeholders. This project was initiated following a request from localpeace educators. We expect a collaborative process to give rise to a relevant, locally generatedpeace curriculum, which could be integrated within the existing school curriculum within the formalsector and also through non-formal avenues involving NGOs.This paper reports on the first phase of the project - a workshop with community stakeholders withthe intention of producing themes that they viewed as regionally important for peace inBougainville. The paper describes the processes used to enhance discussion and decision-makingamong participants, as well as the thematic outcomes that emerged. A number of themes weredeveloped and then prioritised by local, community stakeholders. This aided the identification ofrelevant content for a peace education curriculum. Process, an important part of curriculum development, will be addressed in more detail in partnership with local educators in the secondphase of this project. Ultimately, it is hoped that a locally generated peace curriculum will provemore sustainable as teachers and community members will have increased ownership of it due totheir active involvement in its creation.