Peace education in Zimbabwean pre-service teacher education : a critical reflection

Abstract

This study was designed to bring to the fore the reasons for introducing peace education in pre-service teacher education in Zimbabwean teachers colleges in order to establish the foundations for positive peace in Zimbabwe. The focus of the study was on the preparation of Zimbabwean pre-service teachers in peace education as an effective approach for building durable peace in Zimbabwe. The main research question that guided this study was: Why and how should peace education be introduced at pre-service teacher education colleges in Zimbabwe? The overall aim of the research is to develop an appropriate peace education programme for Zimbabwean teachers’ colleges which will be employed as a strategy for constructing positive peace in Zimbabwe. A phenomenological methodology blending Edmund Husserl’s descriptive phenomenology and Martin Heidegger’s interpretive phenomenology was used to elicit participants’ views on the challenges and possibilities of introducing peace education at pre-service teacher education colleges in Zimbabwe. Data for the study were gathered using semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews and documentary analysis. Key themes emerging from the data analysis were that (a) there is an absence of positive peace in contemporary Zimbabwe (b) Zimbabwean teachers’ colleges are not offering courses in peace education (c) peace education would benefit Zimbabwe as a country, (d) peace education is implementable at pre-service teacher education colleges in Zimbabwe, (e) there is need to develop an appropriate peace education curriculum that reflects the needs of Zimbabwean citizens and (f) college principals, lecturers, student teachers, policymakers and programme-makers have important roles to play in peace education initiatives. Through this study, the researcher established that peace education is a plausible and sustainable mechanism for building positive peace which has remained obscure in Zimbabwe despite thirty-four years of hard won independence. This shows the necessity for introducing peace education in Zimbabwean teachers colleges as a strategy for positive peace building. It is therefore, recommended that teachers’ colleges in Zimbabwe should introduce peace education in their pre-service programmes in order to build prospective teachers’ capacities to establish an infrastructure for positive peace in their future classrooms, the immediate communities and Zimbabwean society as a whole.