Developing Context-Specific Peace Education Programmes with and for Host Populations

Grounded in in-depth empirical example from Bolivia, this qualitative study develops the theory, analysis, and practice needed to contextualise peace education programmes with and for host populations, from beginning to end. On a broader level, this research helps to advance understandings of the complexity surrounding if, how, and to what extent peace and education programmes designed to be universal can be adapted to specific contexts. This study addresses the gap between the broadly accepted precept in scholarship that peace programmes need to be context-specific and the ways in which they are carried out in practice.The research was carried out in three main phases: the design phase, the delivery phase, and the evaluation phase. The approach used throughout was participatory action research and narrative inquiry, a research process which included trying out ideas, and finding out if, how, and in which ways they worked, as well as learning from the story and experiences of those involved in informing the process throughout. Conceptualising the work as research collaboration, the study demonstrates how thirty-four research collaborators and I used a combination of methods (semi-structured interviews, focus groups, participant observation, ongoing dialogue, and learning journals) to examine the process and outcomes.The major contributions from this research include the development of an original conceptual framework and methodology for how to work with and for host populations' throughout the process of developing peace education programmes specific to their context. In doing so, the study explores key aspects relevant to this task, including ethics, fieldwork, power, agency, praxis, dialogue, voice, reflexivity, friction, hybridity, and the relationship between the researcher and the researched. This study is subjected to critical scrutiny throughout by research collaborators.The overall research develops the argument that context-specific peace education programmes can be best achieved through research and practice done with and for host populations. The findings not only have far-reaching implications for the field of peace education and led to a number of theoretically-informed and empirically-grounded recommendations for further work. They have also laid some foundations for what is possible in terms developing peace and education-related programmes in ways that pay just as much attention to interrogating the processes that produce these types of context-specific practices ("the how") as the products ("the what).