Peace through Understanding: Peace Activities as Innovations in Language Teacher Education

Abstract

This chapter contends that peace is necessary and possible. It presents six crucial dimensions of peace: inner, interpersonal, intergroup, international, intercultural, and ecological. The future of the whole planet rides on decisions about these aspects of peace. Foreign and second language (L2) teacher educators and their students, future L2 teachers, have a significant role to play in fostering peace. Peace is created through communication, and communication is the metier of L2 teacher educators and L2 teachers. This chapter explains the importance of weaving peace activities into L2 teacher education and of encouraging prospective teachers to integrate such activities into their own teaching. It describes a current project for weaving peace activities into EFL teacher education in Argentina. Finally, it presents an array of peace activities useful for L2 teacher education and urges readers to use them in teacher education courses.