ERIC Number: EJ1135792
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2017
Pages: 23
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1740 0201
EISSN: N/A
Teachers' Nascent Praxes of Care: Potentially Decolonizing Approaches to School Violence in Trinidad
Williams, Hakim Mohandas Amani
Journal of Peace Education, v14 n1 p69-91 2017
Zero tolerance, punitive, and more negative peace-oriented approaches dominate school violence interventions, despite research indicating that comprehensive approaches are more sustainable. In this article, I use data from a longitudinal case study at a Trinidadian secondary school to focus on the role of teachers and their impact on school violence; I show that institutional constraints are not fully deterministic, as teachers sometimes deploy their agency to efficacious ends. In combining Noddings' postulations on care and Freire's notions of praxis as a symbiosis of reflection and action, I explicate the nascent praxes of care of six teachers at this school, as they strive for more positive peace-oriented approaches to school violence. I characterize these praxes as nascent because they are not fully interrogative of the structural violence of the entire system. However, I do argue that these nascent praxes possess decolonizing and transgressive potentiality in the face of a logic of coloniality that reinforces hierarchy, exclusion, and marginalization in the Trinidadian educational system. I conclude by contending that these nascent praxes must be scaled-up to more mature, radical praxes, including the cultivation of a systemic praxis of care; in other words, a deeper and broader postcolonial peace education.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Violence, Peace, Intervention, Longitudinal Studies, Case Studies, Secondary Schools, Teacher Role, Program Effectiveness, Praxis, Educational History, Foreign Policy
Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Trinidad and Tobago
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A