This dissertation uses Masny’s Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT) to problematize assumptions about literacy underpinning the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program. In addition to teaching English, LINC aims to orient adult immigrants to “the Canadian way of life” which I argue constitutes a form of peace education: teaching peaceful, multicultural values as part of being/becoming Canadian. How do language, literacies, and lessons about peace intersect? MLT foregrounds the Deleuzean-Guattarian concept of becoming: reading intensively and immanently disrupts and transforms individuals in unpredictable ways. I deploy Deleuze and Guattari’s war machine to think about peace as a text that is read and violence as a revolutionary, disruptive force essential for the invention of peace. Accordingly, this research focuses on how experiences of peace AND violence contribute to becoming (i.e. transformation) through reading, reading the world, and self in LINC. Over a 4 month period, 2 teachers and 4 students participated in qualitative inquiry strategies including: video-recorded classroom observations, individual interviews (based on the viewing of video footage of classroom events), and student audio journals. I also collected classroom artifacts used during the observations. Through Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism I frame my research approach as rhizoanalysis. Rhizoanalysis is a (non)method that views data as transgressive (exceeding representation), analysis as a process producing rhizomatic connections (immanence), and reporting as cartography (mapping different assemblages). This research affirms that there is more going on in LINC than its mandate implies and raises questions pointing to the complexities of teaching and learning English in LINC. How might lessons about multicultural values be taken up in ways fraught with tensions between peace AND violence? Becoming-Canadian is an event that unfolds through reading, reading the world, and self. As sense emerges, how might the collision of worldviews around experiences of peace AND violence create encounters that potentially disrupt? How are students, teachers, and even the concepts of “Canadian” and “peace” transformed? I posit rhizocurriculum as a way to account for the affective and transformative powers of multiple literacies in language learning and to view adult immigrant language classrooms as sites of experimentation.

This dissertation uses Masny’s Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT) to problematize assumptions about literacy underpinning the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program. In addition to teaching English, LINC aims to orient adult immigrants to “the Canadian way of life” which I argue constitutes a form of peace education: teaching peaceful, multicultural values as part of being/becoming Canadian. How do language, literacies, and lessons about peace intersect? MLT foregrounds the Deleuzean-Guattarian concept of becoming: reading intensively and immanently disrupts and transforms individuals in unpredictable ways. I deploy Deleuze and Guattari’s war machine to think about peace as a text that is read and violence as a revolutionary, disruptive force essential for the invention of peace. Accordingly, this research focuses on how experiences of peace AND violence contribute to becoming (i.e. transformation) through reading, reading the world, and self in LINC. Over a 4 month period, 2 teachers and 4 students participated in qualitative inquiry strategies including: video-recorded classroom observations, individual interviews (based on the viewing of video footage of classroom events), and student audio journals. I also collected classroom artifacts used during the observations. Through Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism I frame my research approach as rhizoanalysis. Rhizoanalysis is a (non)method that views data as transgressive (exceeding representation), analysis as a process producing rhizomatic connections (immanence), and reporting as cartography (mapping different assemblages). This research affirms that there is more going on in LINC than its mandate implies and raises questions pointing to the complexities of teaching and learning English in LINC. How might lessons about multicultural values be taken up in ways fraught with tensions between peace AND violence? Becoming-Canadian is an event that unfolds through reading, reading the world, and self. As sense emerges, how might the collision of worldviews around experiences of peace AND violence create encounters that potentially disrupt? How are students, teachers, and even the concepts of “Canadian” and “peace” transformed? I posit rhizocurriculum as a way to account for the affective and transformative powers of multiple literacies in language learning and to view adult immigrant language classrooms as sites of experimentation.

This dissertation examines the nexus of complexity theory and peace education and its implications for developing educational praxis that engages with the demands of global complexity. In this thesis, I argue that as societies become more globalized and complex (global complexity) there is an onus upon education to adapt its methods so people can understand the workings of these processes better and further develop the ethical and creative resources needed for responding to system dynamics effectively. My central thesis is that the most appropriate way to do this is to use methods that are congruent with the subject matter of global complexity - that is to align one's pedagogy with one's subject area. This dissertation therefore investigates the situated and contingent responses of peace educators working in the field to the challenges and opportunities that arise when attempting to adapt to local/global dynamics. It utilizes ethnography, narrative inquiry, and autoethnography and draws its data from interviews with over 50 educators in India, Japan, and the US. This research demonstrates that when engaging with global complexity, peace educators adapt both their ontological understanding and methodological orientation in ways congruent at times with the insights of complexity theory. While this understanding can be at odds with mass educational methodologies, this tension also is a touchstone for peace educator's creative formulation of novel praxis in response to the demands of global complexity. This dissertation thus examines some of the possibilities for learning within complex knowledge production systems and highlights the need for further research into the dynamics and processes at play within global educational 'networks'.

This study aims to undertake a thematic investigation of core issues and concerns around peace, conflict and security for residents of three municipal wards of Richmond, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. I provide a contextual analysis of the socio-economic and political circumstances prevailing in 3 municipal wards of Richmond, suggest core contextual issues to consider when designing a sustainable peace education programme for Richmond and finally, reflect on my application of Freirean methodologies in the study. While collecting the data I was project manager of a UKZN peace education programme in Richmond and my research participants were either directly involved in the programme, or peripherally, as NGO workers in complementary peace projects in the area. Data was gathered from minutes of project meetings, structured interviews, and collegial reflections on the project work, but predominantly from informal face-to-face, telephonic and email dialogues with participants during the course of regular project work. Both the theoretical and methodological approaches I adopt for this action research study are centrally framed by a Freirean pedagogy which emphasizes authentic dialogue, praxis, problem-solving education, the importance of social and personal transformation, collaborative inquiry and the production of knowledge that is collectively owned and shared. My findings, which I present in the form of discussions around the generative themes which emerged from the data, largely corroborate my documentary analysis of the context. Historical violence issues such as “unfinished business”, police and military complicity in the political violence, and the proliferation of weapons emerge as powerful generative themes, while displacement of people and families, trauma and fractured families (which also stem from the history of violence), emerge as serious current social challenges to peace and stability. Substance abuse and prostitution, poverty and unemployment, and lack of development also feature strongly as generative themes. One of the key findings of this study is the extent to which political partisanship, power struggles and patronage hamper the implementation of peace and development initiatives. While I suggest some specific contextual issues which need to be considered when designing an holistic peace education programme for Richmond, I recommend that significant stakeholders (including affected communities and their leaders, the university, various NGOs, religious groupings, organs of state, and traditional healers) unify and direct their respective capacities towards a common goal of peace and reconciliation in order to address these issues: creating a culture of healing through jointly organizing cultural events and peace rallies, helping to establish and support Peace Committees, training people in non-violent conflict resolution skills, providing counseling for survivors of political and domestic violence, supporting fractured and vulnerable families, providing better recreational spaces and job opportunities for the youth. Each of these initiatives would furthermore provide a useful opportunity for non-formal peace education. In addition, I suggest the university could partner with the provincial Department of Education to explore ways of integrating peace education throughout existing school curricula, and the establishment of learner peace clubs where learners could form peace committees to provide in-school peer mediation services. I conclude by reflecting on my application of Freirean methodologies. While I lament my failure to apprehend the extent to which my privileged background and my position as a member of the elite class prevented me from experiencing authentic dialogue with my primary participants, and how I consistently missed opportunities to dialogue and employ core Freirean pedagogical techniques such as problem-posing, and how I failed to get to the point of “re-presenting” to participants the generative themes as problems, and coinvestigating solutions to these problems, I manage to end on an optimistic note by recognizing the significance of the personal transformative learning I gained from the experience. / Thesis (M.Com.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2009.

This single case study in Peace Education (PE) was conducted in Central Mexico where violence is manifest in different ways and consequently, PE may be an important intervention. The aim of this study was to acquire an understanding of the impact of PE in Mexico and to understand how students conceptualize peace and violence and how these phenomena impact their aspirations. Participants in this study were a school principal, teachers as well as 9th grade students from a telesecundaria. This research produced a number of key findings: Mexico does not have one concrete conception of PE; the student participants’ definition of peace and violence reflect their reality; and their aspirations can be commensurate with the principles of PE. One of the main conclusions drawn from this study is that although there are a several practices of PE in Mexico, the country needs one concrete proposal of PE tailored to its specific reality.

This single case study in Peace Education (PE) was conducted in Central Mexico where violence is manifest in different ways and consequently, PE may be an important intervention. The aim of this study was to acquire an understanding of the impact of PE in Mexico and to understand how students conceptualize peace and violence and how these phenomena impact their aspirations. Participants in this study were a school principal, teachers as well as 9th grade students from a telesecundaria. This research produced a number of key findings: Mexico does not have one concrete conception of PE; the student participants’ definition of peace and violence reflect their reality; and their aspirations can be commensurate with the principles of PE. One of the main conclusions drawn from this study is that although there are a several practices of PE in Mexico, the country needs one concrete proposal of PE tailored to its specific reality.

This dissertation uses Masny’s Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT) to problematize assumptions about literacy underpinning the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program. In addition to teaching English, LINC aims to orient adult immigrants to “the Canadian way of life” which I argue constitutes a form of peace education: teaching peaceful, multicultural values as part of being/becoming Canadian. How do language, literacies, and lessons about peace intersect? MLT foregrounds the Deleuzean-Guattarian concept of becoming: reading intensively and immanently disrupts and transforms individuals in unpredictable ways. I deploy Deleuze and Guattari’s war machine to think about peace as a text that is read and violence as a revolutionary, disruptive force essential for the invention of peace. Accordingly, this research focuses on how experiences of peace AND violence contribute to becoming (i.e. transformation) through reading, reading the world, and self in LINC. Over a 4 month period, 2 teachers and 4 students participated in qualitative inquiry strategies including: video-recorded classroom observations, individual interviews (based on the viewing of video footage of classroom events), and student audio journals. I also collected classroom artifacts used during the observations. Through Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism I frame my research approach as rhizoanalysis. Rhizoanalysis is a (non)method that views data as transgressive (exceeding representation), analysis as a process producing rhizomatic connections (immanence), and reporting as cartography (mapping different assemblages). This research affirms that there is more going on in LINC than its mandate implies and raises questions pointing to the complexities of teaching and learning English in LINC. How might lessons about multicultural values be taken up in ways fraught with tensions between peace AND violence? Becoming-Canadian is an event that unfolds through reading, reading the world, and self. As sense emerges, how might the collision of worldviews around experiences of peace AND violence create encounters that potentially disrupt? How are students, teachers, and even the concepts of “Canadian” and “peace” transformed? I posit rhizocurriculum as a way to account for the affective and transformative powers of multiple literacies in language learning and to view adult immigrant language classrooms as sites of experimentation.

This dissertation documents an arts-based peace education doctoral study that employed narrative métissage as both a pedagogical and a research tool. The research question asks: Does practicing narrative métissage in an intra-conflict society foster empathy and understanding of self/other? This question is explored with a total of seven Arabic and Kurdish students representing both male and female genders and Muslim and Christian faiths. All the participants were in their second year of study in a two-year English preparatory program at the University of Kurdistan-Hawler, (UKH) in Erbil, Kurdistan, Iraq. The students wrote autobiographical narratives around the theme of “Boundaries,” then participated in workshop forums sharing and weaving their individual narratives together into a longer text—the métissage—and afterwards performed their métissage. The researcher has also woven her own personal narrative of living, teaching, and carrying out research at UKH in Kurdistan, Northern Iraq into the fabric of the dissertation. The participants’ and the researcher’s experiences and insights are documented through autobiographical and story-telling genres in the data representation. The key contributions of this research are practical, theoretical, and methodological. Practically, this research contributes to peace education initiatives in intractable conflict societies, which is an under- researched and under-reported area within peace education studies. Narrative métissage has obvious application as a peace education initiative and as a curricular vehicle for teaching, discussing, and healing around social justice issues in the classroom, however it has not been explored as such. This research contributes to the dialogue of social justice pedagogy. Theoretically, this research contributes to the area of arts-based learning and the power that writing and sharing autobiographical stories has in awakening to self/other, stimulating collective knowledge construction and empowering individual and collective change. The research employs narrative métissage both as a pedagogical tool and a research tool and by doing so lays new ground in terms of methodology. / Graduate

This study explores how the Mir Centre for Peace community programmes in Castlegar, BC, respond to the calls from critical and feminist perspectives in adult education toward social justice. These perspectives call for conscientization, democratization and active citizenship, personal and social transformation, emancipation and empowerment. They also call for processes that use the arts, creativity and imagination, and pay attention to issues such as gender, race, class and the environment. Lacking from these calls is attention to peace, particularly how it is understood and taught, and in areas where a relative peace seems established. To conduct this study, I used a case study design that consisted of five semi-structured interviews with study participants who were involved at the Mir Centre as educators/facilitators, organisers, advisory board members, or a combination of these roles. I also used content analysis of relevant documents found on their webpages, and my participatory observation from nine of their events held during the 2015-2016 year. Through these I glean how this centre organises, educates, and acts for social justice and for peace. Four areas emerged as significant to the literature in critical and feminist perspectives in adult education. These are their attention to reconciliation as a practice of building peace, their attention to ‘place’ as a teaching tool, how they integrate and pay attention to spirituality, and how they construct ‘peace’ as an orientation that includes ‘conflict.’ Recommendations based on my understanding of the calls from critical and feminist adult education are also made to the Mir Centre. / Graduate

This dissertation uses Masny’s Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT) to problematize assumptions about literacy underpinning the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program. In addition to teaching English, LINC aims to orient adult immigrants to “the Canadian way of life” which I argue constitutes a form of peace education: teaching peaceful, multicultural values as part of being/becoming Canadian. How do language, literacies, and lessons about peace intersect? MLT foregrounds the Deleuzean-Guattarian concept of becoming: reading intensively and immanently disrupts and transforms individuals in unpredictable ways. I deploy Deleuze and Guattari’s war machine to think about peace as a text that is read and violence as a revolutionary, disruptive force essential for the invention of peace. Accordingly, this research focuses on how experiences of peace AND violence contribute to becoming (i.e. transformation) through reading, reading the world, and self in LINC. Over a 4 month period, 2 teachers and 4 students participated in qualitative inquiry strategies including: video-recorded classroom observations, individual interviews (based on the viewing of video footage of classroom events), and student audio journals. I also collected classroom artifacts used during the observations. Through Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism I frame my research approach as rhizoanalysis. Rhizoanalysis is a (non)method that views data as transgressive (exceeding representation), analysis as a process producing rhizomatic connections (immanence), and reporting as cartography (mapping different assemblages). This research affirms that there is more going on in LINC than its mandate implies and raises questions pointing to the complexities of teaching and learning English in LINC. How might lessons about multicultural values be taken up in ways fraught with tensions between peace AND violence? Becoming-Canadian is an event that unfolds through reading, reading the world, and self. As sense emerges, how might the collision of worldviews around experiences of peace AND violence create encounters that potentially disrupt? How are students, teachers, and even the concepts of “Canadian” and “peace” transformed? I posit rhizocurriculum as a way to account for the affective and transformative powers of multiple literacies in language learning and to view adult immigrant language classrooms as sites of experimentation.