What Are the Challenges to Peace? A Workshop on Conflict Analysis to Understand Middle East Politics

Abstract

Abstract This article presents an innovative teaching and learning method based on collaborative and inquiry-based learning implemented in a Middle East Politics course. It consists of a series of online workshops in which students work in teams to analyze three different current conflicts in the region: Libya, Syria, and the Israeli-Palestinian. The aim of this method was twofold: on the one hand, to create a reflexive setting to help students acquire the most comprehensive possible knowledge about the conflict's causes and dynamics, the concerns and priorities of the main actors involved or affected by the conflict, and major obstacles to its resolution; on the other hand, to enhance a set of key cognitive, skill-based, and affective learning outcomes, which are essential skills in Political Science and other related areas such as International Studies. This study shows that teaching and learning methodologies based on collaborative and inquiry-based learning are suitable tools to facilitate the understanding of multifaceted, complex realities and to generate new perspectives and views on unfamiliar contexts. This research also suggests that facilitating the active involvement of students in their self-learning can contribute to successful online teaching and to foster the acquisition of key cognitive, skill-based, and affective learning outcomes.