European University Center for Peace Studies (EPU)
The European University Center for Peace Studies (EPU) is located in Stadtschlaining, Austria, a beautiful, small and quiet medieval town in the foothills of the Alps between Vienna and Graz. It has a 700 year old castle hosting the EPU Offices and a peace museum, and a famous peace library with 25,000 books, periodicals and films, mostly in English. It was founded in 1988 by its current President, Dr. Gerald Mader. It has so far educated about 800 students from more than 90 different countries in peace studies and conflict transformation. In 1995 it received the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education.
The EPU program is designed to provide students with the intellectual skills to analyze conflicts and their underlying causes, with practical skills in conflict transformation and peacebuilding, and with the motivation to do everything in their capacity to help create a better world. It seeks to enable and motivate students to help build a more peaceful, equitable and just global society, in harmony with nature.
All the courses are taught in English, by leading specialists in their field from around the world, including Johan Galtung, one of the founders of the academic discipline of peace research and frequent mediator in international conflicts. Studying with the founder of an academic discipline is a rare opportunity, like studying psychiatry with Sigmund Freud or relativity theory with Albert Einstein. EPU offers students a well-rounded program covering Peace with Security, Development, Freedom, Nature and Culture.
Different from most other universities, which have their fixed faculty, EPU has the flexibility to invite the best teachers from around the world from a wide variety of disciplines. As a practical demonstration of cultural peace, EPU seeks to achieve a geographical and gender balance in its teaching faculty. The courses equally emphasize theory, concrete case studies and practical exercises. (http://www.aspr.ac.at/epu/index.htm)
Social Justice and Equity in Education Overview
How does one’s worldview affect the paradigms of education?
How do state or federal mandates affect education and society?
How does the issue of intolerance, injustice, racism and inequity affect schools and society?
How do schools promote or dissuade the perpetuation of violence and war in society?
How does one prepare “teachers” to respond to the injustices and inequities in education and society?
15 students from 10 different countries
PowerPoints used in daily class presentations:
Student Reviews
Week 4: Dr. Diane Ross, Social Justice and Equity in Education
Evaluation- 1=Very Good, 2= Good, 3= Satisfactory, 4= Insufficient, 5= Fail
(Numbers indicate average out of 13 respondents)
- Course Structure: 1.35
- Course Content: 1.92
- Teaching Methods: 1.35
- Relevance to your work, academic interests and personal growth: 1.92
- Availability and contact with students: 1.25
- Reading materials: 1.77
- How would you rate your participation, involvement, presence in class? 1.29
- Do you recommend inviting this lecturer at EPU in the future? (all 13 said yes)
Comments:
What did you like most about the course?
- Diane is trying hard to connect between education, peace, equity, and justice context. A lot of materials were given to us to reflect on after the class. Answering questions at the end of class is a great way to reflect.
- Diane is open and warm and invites all of us into her universe in a soothing manner. Her ideas about self, others, and context, I found very valuable.
- Provided lost of space for discussion. Connected the topic of education to peace well, drew on everyone’s experiences to discuss deep issues like role of education in society, what’s a peace pedagogy.
- This course touches on a field of education which I am familiar with. I have learnt (sic) a lot from Diane, especially related to peace and justice and equity in a school system. She used a variety of teaching methods including group discussions, individual presentations, games, lectures, etc. This was very good. She has done a lot of research hence is very well informed about the content, esp. concerning peace studies.
What suggestions for improvements do you have?
- Please apply peace education more into a global level, rather than USA educational system. (This comment and variations on this comment were the most prevalent in all of their responses.)
- Do more with developing countries.
Personal Reflection:
I came to the EPU feeling confident that I had begun to get a grasp of the issues surrounding peace and justice in educational settings. I came prepared to talk about the No Child Left Behind act and how it impacts students of color, English second language learners, and low socio-economic students. I knew that issues of race and school segregation were still problematic and I came prepared to share the ongoing apartheid in our schools today. I had examples of how teachers addressed issues of war and violence in their classrooms, especially after 911. I came ready to talk about the problem of federally mandated curriculum and high stakes testing and how that led to intolerance, injustice, and inequity. I came ready to encourage students to be introspective and consider their own educational journeys and how that affects how they teach and learn. My expertise was valuable in helping others contextualize their understandings of issues in their own countries.
All of this preparation was essential to my teaching success with the students in this setting. Yet, what I learned there was more imperative to my own success as a teacher educator. I realized that each of the elements taught in my class was important, especially in the United States and in Ohio. The global perspective on education that I gained was life changing. The students that I met came from 30 different countries and each of them had stories to tell of their educational experiences. These were stories that I may have listened to before but had not heard through the eyes of those who had lived these experiences. The recruitment of child soldiers, caning by teachers, the inequality of the girl child’s education in Uganda; the inconsistency of educational opportunities except for the most wealthy in Pakistan and Lebanon; the desire of countries to be more westernized and yet in doing so negating their own unique needs and situations. I heard the concerns of most countries about the United States perspective and how it was being taught to our students in isolation of its impact on others in their world.
Through this experience, I gained new perspective about my work in the United States and a growing desire to continue to understand the lack of consistent quality education available to children in the world. I learned much about what I did not know about education internationally and how I want to address global issues of social justice and equity in education in the future. I have plans to return to the EPU to teach in the future and have recently made plans to go to Tanzania to work with a colleague at setting up a library for the children in Lasso, Tanzania. My path to gaining a larger perspective on my work was lit by many during this sabbatical experience.
(front)
Dominque- Uganda (child soldier at 9, research on equity with girl child education)
Naghmeh- Iran (research on women and leadership roles)
(back)
Soe- Myanmar (research on education and equity in Burma)
Farai – Zimbabwe (research on peace education in African nations)