Educating for Peace: A Case Study of a Constructivist Approach to Understanding Peace through Artistic Expression

This paper discusses a project called “Making a PEACE of Paper,” which illustrates how children can explore the meaning and idea of peace through art while, at the same time, understanding other cultures in a meaningful and respectful way. It describes how students can use art and technology to overcome spatial boundaries and exchange creative ideas with students in another country. It also considers how to create ‘shared spaces’ that may help students from different backgrounds to better understand each other’s cultures. The visual art and technology projects, methods, and pedagogy discussed in this paper can be replicated by teachers and community peace educators easily and with minimal (if any) costs. Through this project, teachers and community peace educators may explore what ‘a peaceful future’ means to students and how they think this may be attained. This project provides an engaging framework for students to share ideas, discover meaning, and advance their own understanding of peace through collaboration, dialogue, and creation of artworks that represent their ideas. It is flexible and adaptable to various contexts, age groups, and settings. It also provides a model for authentic student voice in learning, extensive higher-level thinking, and a platform for collectively reaching new insights. The goal of this project is to provide a compelling way to allow students to “see” peace in a transformed way that will help lead to a more peaceful society. It is hoped that this project will motivate teachers and community educators to create a new vision of teaching this topic of peace.