Turkish Pre-service Teachers' Understandings of War, Peace, and Peace Education

Abstract

Drawing from Nel Noddings’ (2012) framework of peace education and her explanations of evolutionary psychology, this phenomenological research presents an interview study on 43 future-teachers’ understandings of war, peace, and education. Our study focuses on the psychological, social, and educational factors that support the development of future-teachers’ understandings of war and violence, and the contributions of peace education across educational settings. We discuss themes drawn from the beliefs and experiences of the participants including the relationships of war, violence, and peace to understandings and embodiments of militarization, patriotism, gender, and education. The findings show that the lack of peace discourses in schools and the patriarchal Turkish social structure affected participants' understanding of peace. Therefore, participants' definitions of peace and war contained numerous social issues and political crises.