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Peace, Education and Sustainability

PEAS

- Education for Tomorrow

Who are we?

We are a group of teachers and researchers at VIA University College, Denmark, who are interested in reviving the spirit of Klafki’s idea about a critical-constructive approach to didactics and pedagogy in the 21st century.

In other words, we think (like Klafki), that

- some of the fundamental values in general education - and education in general - also in 21st century has to do with self-determination, codetermination and solidarity

-  that general education - and education in general -  should address core problems of the modern world as for example peace, environmental issues, socially created inequalities, effects of new technologies/intercultural education, I-You-relations

- that general education - and education in general - should do this in a way,, which both respect the knowledge in different disciplines and a the same transcend these disciplines, when neccessary in a constructive multidisciplinarity.

Keep reading

However, one could argue that the horizon for asking these problems has changed since Klafi articulated them. The epochal key problems are still there, but the idea of the epoche we live in is changing.

This development is perhaps most prominently exemplified by the idea, that we now live in the epoch of the Anthropocene. According to this idea, then humanity on one hand is recognized as the most important geological factor on earth, but  at the other hand it has become impossible to consider nature and our surrounding world as primarily a dumb resource for humanity’s creation of values.  Nature has returned as “value-in-itself”, and as “other” and this asks profound questions about fundamental ideas:  what it means to be human, the distinction between nature and culture, and the distinction between humans and non-human agency.

These and similar questions have in academia led to the idea of  environmental humanities. The major research question in PEAS is how can we address this development pedagogically, in a way which at the same time becomes less anthropocentric, giving more room to “Gaia” to paraphrase Lovelock (without necessarily following him all the way), and at the same maintains the idea of human dignity, freedom and social justice as central in both education and edification?

PEAS for Tomorrow

Get in touch with PEAS

info (at) peas.nu
PEAS
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