Concepts of Conflict Education - TSpace

Possibilities for Critical Democratic Citizenship Education in Pakistan: Educators’

Concepts of Conflict Education

Fazilat Thaver

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements

for the degree of Masters of Arts

Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the

University of Toronto

©Copyright by Fazilat Thaver, 2006

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ABSTRACT

Possibilities for Critical Democratic Citizenship Education in Pakistan: Educators’

Conceptualizations of Conflict Education. Fazilat Thaver, 2006, Masters of Arts, Ontario

Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

This study examines a citizenship education course in Karachi, Pakistani based on

document analysis and interviews with selected Pakistani educators. The Citizenship and

Conflict Resolution sections of the same course presented contrasting critical and liberal-

democratic notions of citizenship. Participants’ understandings of conflict management

and citizenship ranged between critical and liberal-democratic. Participants proposed

educational strategies, while valuing student/citizens’ involvement in decision-making

strategies, often emphasized changing individual students’ behaviour, a passive notion of

citizenship and adherence to authority rather than systemic change in the school. At the

same time, some participants (especially those marginalized by gender or religious

minority status) recognized systemic inequity as conflict. This exploration of one

citizenship course, and educators’ specific experiences and views, illuminates

possibilities for critical democratic citizenship education in Pakistan.

I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5:

Chapter 6:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

: Introduction .....

: Literature Review.

: Methodology... .

: Document Analysis

The Way Forward

Interview and Action Plan Analysis

i

Ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am not just being gracious when I say I couldn’t have done this without the help of a lot

of people. . .it’s the absolute truth. I would have never, ever completed this thesis had it

not been for my supervisor Kathy Bickmore who did absolutely everything she could to

help me get this M.A. I will ALWAYS be grateful for your work and patience to teach

me things I should already know that helped me get here. Thanks to Bernadette Dean, my

second thesis committee member who was always willing to support me no matter when

or where or how busy she was! Thanks to Mark Evans for accommodating my last

minute readings and for insightful feedback.

I could not have done this without my family’s unwavering and unconditional support (in

taking care of Alisa and me) and encouragement: Mummy, Papa, Ismat appa and Faiz

“bhai”, Atteqa appa, Tehseen (for editing and feedback on numerous drafts) Papa,

Zainab, Insiyah, Farah and Asad and Muneeza (for always being incredibly

understanding and helpful), Maheen and Shama (for her extremely helpful critical

feedback and time). I don’t know what I would do without you'll.

I could not have done this without Alisa as inspiration — and her patience for the many

hours I spent on the computer. And, last but not least, I could not have done this without

Zohair: Zohair, this is for you.

IV

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This study posits that conflict is integral to democratic citizenship. Conflict, in the context of

this study, is a lens that can highlight distribution of power and how it is exercised. The

premise of this study is that equitable power distribution in combination with awareness of,

and access to, knowledge and skills for dealing with conflict, are integral for constructive

conflict resolution. Democratic processes are a means for negotiating and advocating for

equitable relationships and distribution of resources, providing institutional mechanisms for

conflict resolution (judiciary, parliament) for citizens; thus they are a means for constructive

conflict resolution. In the same way, conflict in the form of different opinions, needs, beliefs

and wishes is integral to a vibrant, democratic society, the goal of which would be equitable

power distribution among citizens. Democratic citizens, who believe they have the capacity

to harness democratic processes for the goal of social justice, thus would be enabled to

practice constructive conflict resolution.

Schools, as the first public place individuals encounter before adopting the role of citizen in

society, can play a key role in developing students’ notions about how to understand and

practice citizenship. Here students can be provided with opportunities to practice citizenship-

relevant learning opportunities within the implicit (decision-making and disciplinary

structures) and formal curriculum to develop capacities for democratic citizenship (Bickmore,

2003). As educators play an integral role in regulating students’ understandings and practices

of conflict and citizenship in school, their understandings and practices of conflict and

citizenship must be considered.

In light of these concepts, this study explores the notions of citizenship advocated by selected

Pakistani educators, in relation to conflict and conflict resolution. This study also examines

these educators’ beliefs about citizenship in the hope of identifying possible conditions that

would facilitate and practice learning critical democratic citizenship education in Pakistani

educational structures.

Background: Political Processes and Prevalent Notions of Citizenship in Pakistan

Studies on citizenship and voter turnout during elections shows that a passive notion of

citizenship is dominant in Pakistan: Dean’s study of adults between the ages of 18-50 in five

major cities of Pakistan found that majority of citizens equated rights with responsibilities,

which showed passive notions of citizenship (Dean, 2003). Political apathy was also evident

in the drastically low voter turnout for the first local bodies election. According to electoral

rolls, the voter strength of Karachi was just 4.63 million, in a city populated by over thirteen

million people, by conservative estimates (Hussain, 2005). Depoliticization among university

youth was also reported by Khan whose survey of private and public university students’

perspectives of student politics suggested that student politics was linked to be

counterproductive to high achievement (Khan, 2006).

Pakistan’s democratic processes have been routinely suspended by military regimes and thus

promoted undemocratic practices of citizenship. Military regimes in Pakistan dissolved the

National Assembly (the sovereign legislative body), suspended the Constitution, kept a tight

control of the media (with the exception of General Musharraf which is discussed further

below), and (General Zia’s regime in 1984) banned student unions, which ended the flurry of

student activism that had begun after independence (Khan, 2006). Military regimes in

Pakistan also constitutionalized measures for centralized leadership, which limited citizens’

power in influencing governing structures. The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, a

legacy of General Zia ul Haq (1977-88), for example, gave the President the power to

dissolve the National Assembly. Although this was revoked in 1997 under Nawaz Sharif’s

democratic government, it was partially restored again in 2003 by the Seventeenth

Amendment under the government of General Pervez Musharraf. In April 2004, the

President’s power was restored through the establishment of the National Security Council, a

body chaired by the President. Pakistan’s current semi-presidential government under Pervez

Musharraf, who also occupies the post of Chief of Army staff, is testament to constitutional

amendments by military regimes that channel power to a central ruling figure. Although

Musharraf’s current regime a democratic regime military regime. Citizen participation within

military regimes would be restricted to loyalty to the ruling authority.

Along with military regimes, an authoritarian state-sponsored belief system i.e. ‘Islamic

ideology’ has been used to deny citizenship rights to disadvantaged and minority groups and

women in Pakistan promoted by military and democratic regimes. In 1974, Prime Minister

Zulfigar Ali Bhutto passed a law that differentiated between Muslims and non-Muslims

which identified Ahmedis' as non-Muslims to appease religious parties that were against his

regime. General Zia-ul-Hagq, a military dictator who was also an Islamic ideologue, launched

a formal ‘Islamicization’ movement, which legitimized ‘Islamic ideology’ especially within

education and legal fields. General Zia co-opted extremist religious factions and appointed

their leaders to key government positions, including the Pakistan Ideology Council, a

consultative body of Islamic theologians that wields enormous influence in educational

matters. He also instituted Federal Shariat Courts” — both of which exist to this day (Ahmed,

2005). This regime implemented discriminatory laws such as the Hudood Ordinance? and

upped the punishment for blasphemy from imprisonment to death thus legitimizing

persecution of minorities. Zia’s ‘Islamicization’ movement resulted in the use of control over

women and minorities, justified as the assertion of a Muslim identity, as the ‘lynchpin’ of the

drive towards a symbolic or political Islamic social order (Davies, quoted in Gordon and

Lahelma, 2000). These measures show that Islam was constructed as a State-constructed

ideology that resulted in the marginalization of women and minority groups.

A good example of marginalization of a particular group, justified as promoting ‘Islamic

ideology’ in Pakistan, is the case of the Ahmeddiya community. In 1962 the Islamic Ideology

council added a clause in the Constitution that no law can be repugnant to the teachings of

Islam. Following anti-Ahmediyya protests in 1974, civilian Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali

Bhutto issued amendments in the constitution differentiating Muslims from non Muslim

groups — Ahmediyyas came under the latter. Zia’s rule in 1978 passed laws creating separate

electorates for Ahmediyyas and other non-Muslims. The Federal Shariat Court helped

legalize laws targeting religious minorities — specifically two laws limiting Ahmediyya

activities. The “final death knell” was the passing of the blasphemy law that raised the

punishment for blasphemy from imprisonment to death. As a result, the Ahmediyyas

' This is group that believes in the Prophet hood of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and considered by many Muslim sects as Non-Muslim (wikepedia, retrieved September 10, 2006).

? Established in 1980, this court consist of 8 Muslim judges appointed by the President among retired or serving

judges in the Supreme Court or High Court. Three of these judges are required to be well versed in Islamic law.

The FSC on petition by a citizen or its own motion, has the power to examine and determine as to whether a certain law is repugnant to the teachings of Islam. If not, then government is required to take the necessary steps

to bring the law in accordance to the injunctions of Islam (wikipedia, retrieved on September 10, 2006). > The Hudood Ordinance was enacted in 1979 under Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization. It is most criticized for

criminalizing all extra-marital sex, and making it exceptionally difficult and dangerous to prove an allegation of rape. A woman alleging rape is required to provide four adult male witnesses of "the act of penetration", and if the accused man is Muslim, the witnesses must be Muslims themselves. Failure to prove rape places the woman at risk of prosecution for adultery, which does not require such strong evidence (wikipedia, retrieved September

10, 2006)

adherence to a different Prophet could be considered blasphemous and thus punishable by

death.

The promotion of a dominant Islamic ideology by military and democratic regimes has also

relegated the assertion of regional or ethnic identity by citizens as a threat thus stifling any

affirmation of any citizenship affiliation besides that prescribed by the State (Jalal, 1985).

Although Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, envisioned a secular state, subsequent governments

used Islamic ideology to vanquish a culturally diverse nation (Rosser, 2003). Feroz Ahmed’s

book Ethnicity and Politics in Pakistan comments:

"the state and its ideologues have steadfastly refused to recognize the fact that . . . regions [in Pakistan] are not merely chunks of territory with different names but areas which were

historically inhabited by peoples who had different languages and cultures, and even states of

their own. This official and intellectual denial has, no doubt, contributed to the progressive

deterioration of inter-group relations, weakened societies cohesiveness, and undermined the

state’s capacity to forge security and sustain development.” (quoted in Rosser, 2003)

The assertion of a unitary Muslim identity made the assertion of regional or ethnical

affiliation contrary to nationalist ideals. General Zia, for example made it a capital crime to

speak against the Islamic ideology of Pakistan (Rosser, 2003). Similarly, religious bodies to

this day, interpret proposed changes to ‘Islamic content’ in Social Studies textbook as a threat

to the Islamic ideology of Pakistan. In 2004, for example, the Federal Education Minister’s

proposal to remove Quranic verses about ‘jihaad” from secondary Biology textbooks

resulted in a walk out by religious parties in the parliament. These verses were quickly

reinstated after the MMA, a religious party, organized a million man march. The Islamic

Ideology Council was thus given the responsibility to review all textbooks to ensure ‘Islamic

content.” (DAWN 31/03/04)

Possibilities For Critical Democratic Citizenship Education

In 2001 General Musharraf launched a liberal social reform agenda, calling it “enlightened

moderation”, which sought to foster a gentler and more peaceful image of Islam, both within

and outside Pakistan (Musharraf, 2004). The primary focus of the proposed reform agenda is

citizenship education (Ahmed, 2004). One of the results of this international and national

interest was The Citizenship Rights and Responsibilities Pakistan Project, Canadian

International Development Agency funded, focused on establishing a Pakistani community

* This is an Islamic concept which literally meaning struggle in Arabic. Muslims often to refer to two meanings of the word ‘jihaad’: one means a military struggle and the other personal struggle of personal self improvement

without violence by favoring democratic governance, respect for human rights, and applying

constructive conflict resolution. As I was personally involved in this initiative, which sought

to promote democratic citizenship within Pakistani society, I decided to make it the focus of

my study. In 2002, the Musharraf government also announced local body elections in an

effort for the devolution or power although voter turnout in the election was extremely low

(Khan, 2003) In the education sector, the effort for the devolution of power has led to setting

up School Management Committees (SMCs) to enable communities to improve schools.

According to B. Dean (Dean, 2006), these new initiatives call for active participation of a

greater number of citizens in decision-making processes. This study also arises out of the

need for a citizenship education that could develop students’ capacities for active citizenship,

to enable them to harness opportunities to participate in governance decision-making

structures.

My two year involvement with the CRRP (Citizen Rights and Responsibilities Project) was

first as a Research Associate and secondly as a volunteer. The aim of the project was to

integrate the teaching of citizenship education, conflict resolution education and human rights

education into select public and private schools and teacher training institutes. Activities

undertaken through this project were the rewriting of government primary and secondary

Social Studies textbooks to promote these concepts, training of teachers in public and private

schools, and development of supplementary material for teachers. The last leg of the project

was a four-month course in Citizenship Education, which aimed to create a cadre of

educators who could promote citizenship education within the Pakistani education sector. I

decided to interview some of these course participants — each with influence and potential to

affect change within their respective contexts — to address the gap, apparent within scholarly

literature in examining the possibilities of democratic citizenship within the Pakistani

educational landscape.

Organization of the Thesis

This introductory chapter is followed by a Literature Review that constructs a conceptual

framework for critical democratic citizenship — within which conflict is integral — in

comparison to notions of citizenship within authoritarian and liberal-democratic paradigms. I

then outline how this framework would appear in Pakistani educational structures.

The Literature Review Chapter is followed by the Methodology and Data Analysis Chapters,

which outline the design of the study and its findings. The Research Questions examined in

this study were:

e How is conflict and conflict education conceptualized within a Pakistani

educational context in relationship to citizenship education?

Course documents of the Citizenship and Conflict sections of the Citizenship Education

course, and interviews and Action Plans of six course participants, were the data sources for

this study.

The last chapter discusses the ramifications for the findings of this exploratory study for

shifting a dominant paradigm of authoritarianism towards critical democratic citizenship

education. I discuss how this would entail reconceptualizing the distribution of power within

educational structures, starting with the role of the teacher.

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

Introduction

In this chapter, I develop a theoretical framework to illustrate possible and preferable

approaches to citizenship education in Pakistani schools. I argue that conflict is integral to the

notion of critical democratic citizenship and citizenship education. Conflict and citizenship

are linked by the notion of power — conflict is a struggle through which relations of power

become apparent, while citizenship is a means through which power can be exercised

equitably. Learning to deal with conflict in a way that would repair damaged relationships

and redress social inequities requires mechanisms embodied in critical democratic

citizenship. Critical democratic citizenship requires conflict, to help make hidden power

structures become visible. Conflict can be a lens though which we see distribution of power

and its inequities more clearly. Hluminating inequitable power structures is necessary to

establish more equitable power structures, thus conflict integral to critical democratic

citizenship.

Different approaches to citizenship imply different approaches to power distribution and to

how this power should be exercised. In this Literature Review, I discuss these different

approaches to citizenship by categorizing them using three paradigms of citizenship -

authoritarian, liberal-democratic, and critical-democratic - and discuss how each is relevant to

the Pakistani context. I show why critical democratic citizenship which highlights inequitable

power structures, is my preferred paradigm. Lastly, I outline the components of an equity-

based ‘critical democratic citizenship education’ drawing from North American and Pakistani

scholarship.

RELATIONSHIP OF CONFLICT TO CITIZENSHIP

Conflict is (among other things) the struggle for power; therefore conflict is integral to

citizenship. Citizenship relies on individuals and groups who are empowered to participate in

decision-making structures (in the home, school or society at large). Power, and how it is

exercised, are therefore central ideas informing citizenship. The notion of citizenship I will be

advocating in this study — which I refer to as critical democratic citizenship - is one where

citizens are empowered to affect change by participating in decision-making. This

participation involves expressing different ideas and points of view, as well as collectively

highlighting and challenging inequitable access to power.

Conflict is also a tool to examine implied power relations within different types of

citizenship. Moments of conflict are defining moments, as it is at times of crisis that

subconscious, withheld or immersed beliefs emerge and become conscious. It is also at this

point that relations of power (manifested as conflict) become visible. When conflict emerges,

therefore, it creates an opportunity to ask key power-related questions, such as who holds

power and how is it exercised?

Different understandings of how power should be handled lead to different understandings of

how conflict should be handled. Different understandings of how conflict should be handled

(the individual’ s relationship to society), in turn, lead to different understandings of

_ citizenship. Power, therefore, is a key organizing principle in discussing approaches to

conflict and approaches to citizenship. I discuss three approaches to citizenship and conflict

that are apparent in citizenship literature — authoritarian, liberal-democratic and critical-

democratic - their implied use of power and the relevance of each of these approaches to

conflict and citizenship education in Pakistan.

~ Three Theoretical Paradigms ~

In the section below, I construct a framework for critical democratic citizenship by discussing

elements of authoritarian and liberal-democratic citizenship paradigms that may be contrary

to critical democratic citizenship goals, and then outlining concrete components for what I

believe critical democratic citizenship education should include. (Table 1)

Authoritarianism

Power, in closed authoritarian regimes, lies with an individual leader or elite ruling authority.

Political systems such as monarchies, despotism, military regimes and theocracies can be

classified as authoritarian. People, whom the State does not entitle to democratic citizen

- rights, are subjects whose role is to uphold State authority, rather than work collectively for

the betterment of society. Authoritarian regimes deny their citizens basic tenets of

democracy, such as elections that are free and fair, full adult suffrage, broad protection of

civil liberties including freedom of press, speech and association, and the absence of non-

elected “tutelary” authorities such as military, monarchy or religious bodies that limit elected

officials’ effective power to govern (Levitsky and Way, 2006). Conflict among citizenship, in

the form of different points of view, contestation for power, and debate, is suppressed.

Conflict resolution mechanisms such as the judiciary, parliament and the media are also

suppressed. Citizens, without any mechanisms to exert influence over policies of the State,

therefore have no voice.

Given that the authoritarian State does not concern itself with getting consent from citizens

and does not allow citizens to express their views about the policies of the State, such

regimes can also enforce powerful, oppressive measures against citizens in their sphere of

influence. Citizens can be subject to state authority even in matters of personal choice such as

religion, on the basis of which minority groups can be persecuted. Authoritarian regimes in

Southeast Asia, for example, have been more likely to employ communally based policies, to

be less responsive to ethnic minority concerns, to be disinclined to conform to international

human rights standards and to be disinterested in establishing state-sponsored anti-

discrimination mechanisms (Rahim, 2005).

In Pakistan, as discussed in the Introduction chapter, authoritarian military regimes that have

ruled the country for half of its existence, have stifled conflict, and denied citizens access to

democratic mechanisms through which they could exercise their rights. They have done so by

blocking the judiciary, suspending the Constitution, dissolving the National Assembly,

controlling the media and banning student groups. Military and allegedly democratic regimes

in Pakistan, through the enforcement of an authoritarian belief system — Islamic ideology -

have also stifled expression of conflicting identities and curtailed citizenship rights to

disadvantaged groups such as women and religious minority groups.

Education

Authoritarian teaching and learning processes in the formal curriculum marginalize conflict

(dissenting points of view, content that would promote critical thinking) by teaching students

to consider knowledge presented in the classroom as fixed and value free. Students are to be

passive recipients operating in a flawless system with no control (democratic agency) over it.

The dominant mode of learning in Pakistani schools is by rote, with a focus on leaming

information for examinations (Saigol, 1998, Warwick and Reimers, 1999). This is

substantiated by Dean’s study (2005) that examined teaching-learning processes of

citizenship education in 7 government and 4 private schools in Karachi, and found all except

one private school classroom emphasized recall of content (recitation) as its primary

teaching-learning process. Dean argues that this supports passive (authoritarian) citizenship.

Pakistan’s national educational objectives for civic education, from 1972 until today, promote

an exclusionary notion of citizenship by equating citizenship with practicing Islam, and

promoting obedience and loyalty as the primary values of a citizen discouraging dissent and

advocacy. The national curriculum objectives state that the course on civics seeks to promote

unity of the Muslim Ummah in the world and to inculcate a strong sense of gratitude to

“Almighty Allah” for making Pakistan an independent Islamic state. In addition, it claims

that it seeks to prepare future citizens who are conscious of their positive role in Islamic

society and the world at large (Government of Pakistan, 2002a, p.5, cited in Ahmed, 2004).

Citizenship education in Pakistan, as evident through the Social Studies curriculum,

emphasizes learning facts about specific prescribed duties identified for citizens. Pakistani

Social Studies textbooks depict Pakistani government ideology as absolute and undisputed.

The educational objectives of the Social Studies curriculum are, for example, “to foster an

unflinching love for Pakistan, to understand the factors responsible for its birth, to feel proud

of being Pakistani” (Government of Pakistan, 1973). Responsible citizens, according to the

curriculum, “understand the duties and responsibilities of home, school, community, and the

government” and acquire “knowledge of the duties towards Allah the Almighty, and

knowledge of the duties towards fellow human beings (Government of Pakistan, 1973, p. 3-

4). The textbook promotes a notion of citizen as one who is under the power of an authority,

and whose role is to follow directions. As major decision-making is left up to a powerful

group of educated experts, the sole political duty of the citizen (beyond obedience) is

therefore to elect these experts to office (Dean 2000).

The dominant ideology of citizenship apparent within the Social Studies textbooks excludes

minority groups (Saigol, 1998, SDPI Report, 1991, Nayyar and Hoodbhoy, 1985). For

example, according to the 1995 Civics curriculum, the five duties of the non-Muslim citizen

are identified to be: “loyalty to the Islamic state”; “paying jizya”; “worship only at separate

and officially-approved locations”; “abstaining from creating discord and civil strife in the

Islamic state”; and “playing an active role in strengthening the Islamic state” (1995, p. 77).

10

As is obvious from this example, the emphasis on an Islamic ideology renders values of

individual liberty, religious freedom, gender equality, the rule of law, and equal rights —

concepts that are generally the staple of contemporary citizenship education theory and

western secularism — as inappropriate for an Islamic polity (Nayyar, 2003, cited in Ahmed,

2004). The prominence of the idea that citizenship is an assertion of Islamic identity within

the civic curriculum implies that “any person in Pakistan enjoys freedom and rights as long as

he performs his [Islamic] duties, not taking into account economic and social disparities

which enable only some classes to participate in elections, hold office and freely express their

opinions or views” (Saigol, 1998, 243). The problem with the emphasis on Muslim identity

within citizenship is that it excludes marginalized groups — women, the working class, and

cultural minorities — from the curriculum and textbooks. Thus, different knowledge could be

provided to different groups preventing disadvantaged citizens from receiving education of

equal quality Citizens thus are taught to passively accept inequitable power relations.

Pakistani national Social Studies textbooks (the textbooks used in public but not private

schools) also reflect State suppression of conflict within notions of citizenship by

emphasizing social cohesion and depicting any assertion of an alternative identity besides the

State-sanctioned Islamic identity as a threat to national integrity. Y. Rosser’s analysis of these

textbooks, asserts that this approach to Islamic ideology requires negation of regional and

ethnic affiliations (Rosser, 2003). National textbooks since 1972, according to Rosser, ignore

the history of the subcontinent, focus on the time after Islam came into Sindh, and fast

forward to Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s efforts for Pakistan: “ beginning with the Bhutto years

and accelerating under the Islamized tutelage of General Zia-ul Haq, not only has the history

of the subcontinent been discarded, but it has been vilified and mocked and transformed into

the evil other, a measure of what Pakistan is not’ (Rosser, 2003). Rosser, illustrates this

argument with a quote from Akbar S. Ahmed’s book, Search for Saladin on Pakistani history

(Ahmed cited in Rosser, 2006) “we are not Hindus. We are not Indians. We will not be ruled

by the Hindus. We do not practice the evil caste system. We do not mistreat our minorities.

We do not attack our neighbours." These negative assertions promote an exclusionary notion

of citizenship: ‘Pakistani’ is constructed in contrast to all that it is not making exclusion a

defining principle of national identity and assertion of regional and ethnic affiliation as a

threat to national cohesion. Non-Muslim cultural influences are often blamed for regional

allegiances, for example a Pakistan Studies textbook, states that, "at present a particular

segment, in the guise of modernization and progressive activity, has taken the unholy task of

11

damaging our cultural heritage. Certain elements aim at the promotion of cultures with the

intention to enhance regionalism and provincialism and thereby damage national integration"

(Sarwar quoted in Rosser, 2006). Thus, citizenship ideology embedded in these textbooks’

representations of identity require a negation of all aspects of citizenship except for the notion

of citizenship sanctioned by the State. The textbook’s depiction of citizenship, given that they

have been in use through military and democratic regimes, is endorsed by both of these types

of regimes.

Aside from the textbooks, Dean found authoritarian teaching-learning processes and

disciplinary measures to be prevalent in her study of Pakistani public and private schools.

Within the classrooms Dean studied, the teachers established themselves as the sole authority

by maintaining strict discipline often using reward and punishment to maintain control:

“students who succeed academically or behave well in class are made monitors while those

who do not are scolded, deprived of rewards and occasionally beaten.” (Dean, 2005, p.47) It

is clear from Dean’s statement that student monitors were used to enforce adherence to

existing authority. All were teacher appointed (except in one school where monitors were

elected) and had the responsibility of maintaining discipline in the teacher’s absence. Aside

from textbooks then, the emphasis on obedience oriented discipline strategies impede

democratic citizenship learning opportunities in public and private schools. Corporal

punishment, rote learning and exam-focused teaching methods are dominant in low to

middle-income private Pakistani schools (Dean, 2005, Saigol, 1993). Authoritarian decision

making and disciplinary approaches in schools may be manifest in the form of what Kathy

Bickmore calls ‘peacekeeping’ or punitive disciplinary measures that aim to contain conflict

through blaming/exclusion or obedience-oriented programs (Bickmore, 2003). Such implicit

curriculum would teach students to obey authority rather than empowering them with positive

education to handle conflict and thus to develop capacities to practice critical democratic

citizenship. Examples of ‘peacekeeping’ would be harsh discipline policies for a range of

student behaviours such as punishment, suspension and expulsion aimed to quell any sort of

challenge to authority. The goal of authoritarian peacekeeping would be to maintain harmony

through maintaining order within the school and consider those engaging in conflicts as

‘deviants’ (Merelman, 1990).

Authoritarian systems of management are also dominant in hierarchal decision-making

through different tiers of the Pakistan education system. Both government and private school

12

decision-making structures are dominantly hierarchal (Dean, 2005, Saigol, 1993). The most

important decisions regarding the allocation of resources, choices of curriculum, teaching

methods, priorities of functions etc., are made right at the top and usually only involve the

owners/directors of the school, and sometimes a limited role for the principals (Saigol, 1993).

These decisions are usually not open to challenge or question at the middle or lower levels.

Authoritarian educational structures can promote passive notions of citizenship. Bush and

Saltarelli (2000) argue that disciplinary measures that rely on decision making power of

authority rather than on teaching students to deal with their own conflict could lead to lower

student self confidence. Because within authoritarian discipline policies there is no way for

students to convey their feelings/concerns to the school staff, these policies are contrary to

democratic principles. Punishment can also act as a counterforce to critical democratic

citizenship, as it can inculcate a ‘culture of fear’ that could translate into not acting, thus

promoting passive citizenship (Bush & Saltarelli, 2000). Authoritarian conflict management

processes can be decidedly undemocratic also by promoting inequity among students, given

that harsh disciplinary practices can disproportionately target disadvantaged groups, and rely

on blaming/exclusion thus alienating students rather than building positive relationships with

authority. In addition, such practices assume that violence is a “behavioral problem’ located

in the students whereas studies on school violence show that positive relationships among

students and teachers, good quality instruction (Gladden’) and reduced disparity between

high and low achieving students (Akiba et al)° are linked to lower levels of school violence.

When such policies unfairly target students, (often, disadvantaged students), they are

decidedly undemocratic.

Lack of resources and attention in Pakistan to the national education system due to the

prioritization of military defence spending and debt servicing in the national budget, on the

whole, also restricts low-income students’ (who attend public schools) access to quality

> Gladden’s (2002) study that sought to explore the most important strategies for overcoming school violence found that efforts to improve school climate had greater effect on school violence than those that only focused

on developing students’ behavior Important factors in reducing school violence within schools were those that combined high levels of caring from teachers with high levels of academic expectation: positive relationships between students and teachers, a strong academic focus that prevented behavior and discipline from being a primary focus, pro social approaches to teaching and learning and good extracurricular activities. Gladden found that punishment in fact increased student misbehavior (Gladden, 2002).

® Akiba et al’s (2002) study on school violence in 37 nations based on TMMS data found that national systems of education that produce greater achievement differences between high and low achieving students had greater incidences of school violence (delinquency, youth crime and disruption). Akiba et al’s finding shows that school violence is less related to general patterns of violence or lack of social integration and more to do with the

quality of instruction in schools.

13

education, thus inhibiting their opportunities to learn and practice skills for citizenship. This

is substantiated by Warwick and Reimers’ study investigating students’ poor achievements

(especially in mathematics and science subjects) in Pakistani primary schools: they found that

school based constraints rather than students’ socio-economic or gender backgrounds were

largely to blame (Warwick and Reimers, 1999). These school-based constraints were: a weak

infrastructure, textbooks that arrive towards the end of the school year, poorly educated and

minimally motivated teachers, a supervision system that paid little attention to educational

quality, and teaching methods based on rote learning.

In summary, authoritarian political structures — military regimes that have weakened or

manipulated democratic processes to support centralized leadership and the perpetuation of

‘Islamic ideology’ and also school-based teaching and learning processes that emphasize the

authority of the teacher and unquestioned knowledge as fact, textbooks that promote Islamic

ideology, hierarchal decision making structures, and punitive disciplinary measures —

contribute to authoritarian means of managing conflict, which can promote passive practice

of citizenship.

14

Table 1

View of Concept of Power dynamics | Means of dealing | Citizenship

Citizens citizenship with conflict Education

Authoritarian | Citizens are Citizens fulfill Power lies with Obey duties Learning controlled by a | duties and authority. prescribed by historical facts. governing responsibilities Limited access to | State - thus authority prescribed by power through suppression of

State. trusting authority. | conflict.

Liberal- Autonomous Citizenship a Assumes all have | Individual Learning about

Democratic individual private matter. equal access to participation in and accepting citizens Individuals power. decision making others. influence (and _ | exercise rights Power sharing structures and Participation are influenced | and through expression of in decision- by) their social | responsibilities individual point of view. making

surroundings. | and respect participation in structures and

others’ rights and | decision-making shared responsibilities. structures and authority.

civil society.

Critical- Citizens have | Collective Power sharing Critically Critically Democratic potential to endeavour for through collective | examining power | examining

(collectively) social justice. awareness and structures, power

act upon their challenge of participation in structures, world, and inequitable power | significant participation in

probe structures. decision- making | significant underlying structures. decision- bases of action making by authority, structures at a

in order to school level. expose injustice and

assumptions.

Liberal-Democratic

Power, within the liberal democratic paradigm of citizenship, lies with the individual and is

accessed by citizens through the electoral process, after which it is entrusted to the elected

representative. Sovereignty resides with people, and the government is viewed as being made

up of representatives elected from and by the people (Dean, 2000, Sears and Hughes, 1996).

Thus, power is accessible to a larger group who are representatives of the people rather than

with a single leader or a small group as with citizenship within the authoritarian paradigm.

Citizenship, within the liberal-democratic paradigm, is a singular individual-State

relationship. The goal of State entitled citizenship nghts is to protect individuals from the

infringement of others. The role of the citizen is to discuss issues in public places and to elect

political leaders that best represent their needs and interests. The role of the citizen is

informed by being able to sort true from false information (using rational processes), to make

decisions in the interest of self and/or ‘public good’ within a public sphere. The long-term

15

goal is society or a context within which all can live their individual lives in peace (Giroux,

1980). The emerging picture of liberal-democratic citizenship, compared with citizenship

within authoritarianism as discussed above, is that (at least some) citizens that are more

active in decision-making structures. Liberal-democratic regimes where citizens have limited

power in certain areas may also be considered semi- authoritarian: democratic states, for

example, can be authoritarian when a ruler or ruling party singly governs decisions relating to

matters of national security. Regimes where power is monopolized by a political party that

restricts means for contestation of opposition parties within democratic processes are also

closer to authoritarian than democratic regimes (Levitsky and Way, 2006).

Unlike authoritarianism, conflict within the liberal-democratic approach to citizenship is

apparent as debate and dissenting viewpoints within the public sphere. The public domain is a

platform for citizenship participation where citizens can debate different viewpoints using

rational processes. Conflict management processes, therefore, distinguish conflict from

violence. Conflict has the potential to be constructive or destructive, and learning or using

certain strategies, skills or processes (assumed to be equally applicable to anyone, regardless

of culture or social status) can enable constructive resolution of conflict (Staurie, 2003).

Conflict appears as a power struggle; conflict resolution approaches emphasize the resolution

of this struggle through the use of individual communication-based strategies (assumed

incorrectly to be culturally universal) and thus preserving reigning social order (Lederach,

1995).

Democratic regimes that have governed Pakistan have been similar to authoritarian regimes

in their approach to conflict management: these further corrupted and politicized democratic

mechanisms, such as the judicial system, abused civil liberties of citizens in the name of

fighting terrorism and relied on the military to maintain law and order (Diamond, 2006) thus

blocking avenues for political conflict management.

The liberal-democratic ideology of citizenship and conflict management competes with the

authontarian Islamic ideology prevalent within Social Studies textbooks in Pakistan. The

dominant State sanctioned ideology argues that religion and State are two in one, whereas the

liberal-democratic ideology argues that these should be separate based on its emphasis on

secularism and equality for citizens (Ahmed, 2005, Lee, 2006). Liberal-democratic ideology

proposes that this ideology proposes a separation between church and state and defines

citizenship in pluralist terms: “The hallmark of the Pakistani model of liberal-democratic

16

vision is pluralism, stipulating non interference of the state in citizen’s faith and recognition

of cultural diversity” (Ahmed, p. 40, 2005). Ahmed also proposes that this vision rejects the

theocratic form of Islamic state on the premise that it impedes social change as well as

because it is excludes women and non-Muslim citizens from equal participation.

Problems with a liberal-democratic approach to citizenship in Pakistan are that its

proponents have tended to emphasize individual autonomy and rationality versus a notion

of citizenship that affirms inclusion of women and minority groups. Dr Perez Hoobdhoy, a

Harvard educated physics professor at Quaid-e-Azam university in Islamabad, is the editor

of Education and the State: Fifty Years of Pakistan — a compilation of various essays on

education to commemorate Pakistan’s fiftieth anniversary - and a leading voice of the

liberal-democratic camp. He emphasizes a notion of citizenship this is grounded in

concepts of logic, reason, and scientific rationality. In his article, “Muslims and the West

after September 11,” Hoodbhoy states:

“Our collective survival lies in recognizing that religion is not the solution; neither is

nationalism. Both are divisive, embedding within us false notions of superiority and arrogant pride that are difficult to erase. We have but one choice: the path of secular humanism, based upon the principles of logic and reason. This alone offers the hope of providing everybody on this globe with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of

happiness” (Hoodbhoy, 2006)

Hoodbhoy’s assumption here is that the separation from religious ideas and the

establishment of a rational society can eradicate social ills. The emphasis on universal values

of secular humanism in Hoodbhoy’s perspective disguises the ways these values implicitly

privilege certain groups over others.

Thus a similarity between authoritarian and liberal-democratic approaches of citizenship in

Pakistan is that both focus on defining Pakistani citizenship in terms of what it is not.

Pakistan is often defined in history texts on the basis of what it is not, for example focusing

on failings of India. Similarly, liberal democratic approaches to citizenship emphasize a non-

violent, non-theocratic State that is reliant on what Mary Dietz calls negative liberty.

Negative liberty means non-interference, or the freedom of the individual citizen to choose

his or her own values or ends without impediment from others; it assumes a similar liberty for

others (Dietz, 1989, p. 14). Negative liberty thus emphasizes that the individual’s actions are

governed by unconstrained individual choice. Citizenship action would involve staying out of

the way of other citizens, in order to enable each to meet their individual goals, rather than

17

collective engagement. The underlying assumption here is that each citizen has equal access

to power.

A liberal-democratic understanding of citizenship that assumes that individuals are governed

by choice and have equal access to power is problematic, as it does not consider inequitable

power structures that govern individuals’ access to power and choice. Equal access to power

for all citizens is not the reality in Pakistan, given the semi-authoritarian government and the

second-class treatment of women and minority groups. Critical writings on citizenship, such

as of feminist and educator Rubina Saigol, argue that patriarchal values are legitimized

through laws and cultural practices that use women’s bodies to assert male power (see

below). This is evident through laws that consider a woman’s testimony to be half that ofa

man’s or that grant women citizenship rights only in the context of her relationship to a man

— wife, sister, daughter or mother (Saigol, 2000) Patriarchal values are also promoted through

sociocultural practices: for example, studies of cultural patterns of immigrant Pakistani

families in the US found that that male decision makers are common in Pakistani families

(Matthews, 2000, Ibrahim et al., 1997). In the context of citizenship education, decision

making and disciplinary structures as well as the formal curriculum can regulate

girls/women’s and other marginalized students’ opportunities to learn citizenship (Gordon,

Holland and Lahelma, 2002). The emphasis on modesty, humility and obedience that may be

culturally and systemically prescribed for girls would lead them to learn citizenship

differently than would male students in Pakistan. The assumption of equality embodied in

liberal-democratic notions of citizenship and conflict management approaches would tend to

ensure the status quo, and in this case dominance of Muslim male authority in Pakistan thus

further marginalizing groups that would require constitutional mechanisms to ensure their

access to power (see further discussion in next section).

Education

A liberal-democratic individualist approach to conflict management is probably the dominant

approach to conflict resolution education in North America. These approaches emphasize

teaching-learning students skills to effectively resolve individual power struggles in order to

co-exist in a non-violent community. Conflict resolution courses conducted in many school

would cover the general understanding of conflict, perception and understanding of different

18

viewpoints, anger management and rules/processes for fighting in a fair manner (Carruthers

et al., 1996). This formal curriculum might also attempt to enable students to appreciate

diversity, through exploring different value systems and encouraging them to choose and

articulate their own. The emphasis within this approach to conflict resolution education

would be on learning by doing, through active, participative experiences in the school, local

community or beyond. This could enable students to acquire communication-based skills and

tolerant values for liberal-democratic citizenship.

Approaches to citizenship education based on this paradigm have been classified as

“education through citizenship” (Kerr, 2003b). Opportunities to attend to critical agency and

conflict communication across cultural, gender, language, ideological, or power differences

create opportunities for critical democratic citizenship engagement. In contrast, curricula

emphasizing narrow regulation of student behavior and goals have similar implicit citizenship

education goals to authoritarian conflict management approaches (Bickmore, 2003).

Private schools in Pakistan use different textbooks than those in the government sector, thus

possibly promote a different notion of citizenship. A liberal-democratic approach to

citizenship would possibly be apparent in some Pakistani textbooks used within the (affluent)

private schools that use British Cambridge curriculum for O level examinations. There are no

available studies on notions of citizenship education within Cambridge textbooks used in

Pakistan alone, but Khan’s survey about student politics suggests that individualistic notions

of citizenship are more prevalent in private university students compared to those from a

public university. Based on the survey results, Khan suggested that those from affluent

private school backgrounds represented a certain individual idealism that may not be

prevalent in public school students (Khan, 2006).

A liberal-democratic approach to school conflict management and discipline would be more

pro active and less punitive, emphasizing dialogue and problem solving rather than blaming

or punishment. Such activities could facilitate capacity building for potential individual

agency. Such conflict resolution approaches could be learnt through co-curricular activities

such as student governance, peer mediation, social skills as well as debating controversial

issues within the curriculum.

A liberal-democratic emphasis on dialogue-oriented approaches in conflict resolution might

assume equal access to power among students that would be problematic. Conflict resolution

19

strategies such as peer mediation - training of selected students as impartial third parties who

help disputing youth find their own resolution to conflict through a structured mediation

process - can be effective in addressing interpersonal conflicts among students of similar

status (Bickmore, 2002 & 2003). However, such dialogue approaches may ignore the

differing power held by students of different racial, gender or socio-economic backgrounds,

or assume that these factors are “non-mediable” (Baker et al., 2000). Peer mediation that does

not address differing status of students may not be effective in dealing with social status

competition and power-imbalanced conflicts such as teasing, bullying, harassment, or

discrimination (Bickmore, 2003).

Communication-based strategies also do not necessarily address how school processes may

promote inequity, which is manifested as conflict, or how systemic perpetuation of obedience

to authority marginalizes disadvantaged groups. To enable positive approaches to handling

conflicts that rely on dialogue and problem solving instead of punitive disciplinary measures

would require replacing the authoritarian values that underlie decision-making and

disciplinary structures. Studies on school violence discussed earlier show that an egalitarian

school climate is a key component for constructive conflict resolution. Thus communication-

based strategies alone may not be sufficient to address all types of conflict — and especially

equity-based conflicts - in schools. High achieving or ‘good’ students are more prone to

access power as student monitors in Pakistani schools based on Dean’s findings. Thus these

same students might more likely be selected for peer mediation (if such a program existed in

those schools). Curriculum packages that promote tolerance and egalitarianism within

intolerant and inegalitarian education structures may not be effective in reducing prejudice

(Bush and Saltarelli, 2000). In Pakistan’s class-stratified public schools, introducing

communication-based strategies alone, therefore, would not sufficiently address, for example,

bias that is promoted through the formal curriculum, or punitive decision making structures

that target disadvantaged students.

For example, a comparative conflict-styles study found Pakistani girls to be more prone to

accede to their mother’s authority than British girls - thus elders did play a key role in dealing

with conflict situations (Gilani, 2000). Similarly, ethnographic studies of immigrant Pakistani

families in the US also found elders prominent as decision makers (Ibrahim et al., 2000,

Matthews, 2002). The liberal-democratic preference for rational debate that emphasizes

20

dispassionate and reasoned speech by any individual as approaches to conflict could thus

privilege conflict styles of certain social and cultural groups over others (Young, 1996).

In summary, citizens have more power within a liberal-democratic paradigm than an

authoritarian paradigm. Liberal-democratic approaches to conflict management emphasize a

resolution of conflict. Liberal-democratic concepts of citizenship are also apparent within

discourse that emphasizes a separation between religion and the State in Pakistan. However,

this notion of citizenship is problematic, based on its assumption that individuals have equal

access to power, which ignores the unequal status of disadvantaged groups. This assumption

in individualist liberal-democratic citizenship and conflict management approaches could

thus serve to reinforce inequitable power structures. Approaches to conflict management can,

in their emphasis on the individual, marginalize alternative approaches to conflict resolution.

Critical-Democratic

Citizenship within a critical-democratic paradigm, as in the liberal-democratic notion, also

emphasizes self-governance. However, a critical-democratic perspective posits that not all

citizens, by virtue of bemg citizens, necessarily have equal access to the public realm where

they can exercise power to influence State policies. Neo-Marxist and feminist theories, for

example, challenge the ostensible equal access to the public realm by highlighting how this

assumption of neutrality hides real inequities that can restrict citizenship participation of

diverse groups (Lather, 1995). The critical orientation highlights the perspective that the

individual citizen is embedded in a social context, which is governed by inequitable

structures that privilege some over others by providing greater access to power (Giroux,

1980). For example, certain groups — socially located by identities such as gender, ethnicity,

race, and sexual orientation - are in more powerful positions than disadvantaged groups.

The liberal-democratic approach, in its assumption of a neutral public realm, requires that

citizens divorce themselves from their social realities to adopt norms that privilege specific

social values over others. A critical understanding of the public realm, in contrast, depicts the

public realm as heterogeneous, enabling citizens to participate while having their differences

affirmed by society (Young, 1996). The overarching belief informing this notion of

citizenship is that citizens have differential access to power, thus need the State to institute

affirmative mechanisms that can enable diverse groups to be actively involved in the decision

21

making structures that govern them, and to be capable of affecting social change (Bickmore,

2003, Sears, 1996, Kahne and Westheimer, 1996).

The role of citizens in a critical-democratic perspective, therefore, would entail awareness of

their own power positions in relation to others and with this knowledge, individuals and

groups enter a public realm as citizens to act upon this information. Here, citizenship

participation would depend upon what Dietz calls ‘positive liberty’ — collectively acting with

others to advocate an equitable society - rather than merely the ‘negative liberty’ assumed in

the liberal-democratic paradigm (Dietz, 1989). This notion of citizenship recognizes that

disadvantaged groups have different access to power, thus citizens would lobby to

institutionalize constitutional mechanisms to give voice especially to disadvantaged groups —

such as women or minorities — who have been excluded from citizenship discourses and

practices that assume universal equal access among individual citizens. This voice could be

manifested in measures to enable disadvantaged groups to propose policy proposals, and even

to have veto power about policies that affect them (Young, 1996). The goal of critical-

democratic citizenship participation, therefore, would be collective citizenship action or

advocacy to redress social injustices.

In Pakistan, feminist scholarship has prominently articulated a critical democratic approach to

citizenship that problematizes the assumption of equal access embodied in citizenship

approaches within the liberal-democratic paradigm. Rubina Saigol, for example, describes the

Pakistani notion of citizenship as masculinized. She critically analyzes discourses relating to

“State” and “nation” to illustrate how concepts of citizenship preoccupied with “universal

equality” hide particular interests and thus represent male interests as if they were universal:

States are conceived in masculine images, while nation is a feminine imaginary. Like states,

men are regarded as being rational, individualistic, impersonal, objective, and worthy of

being treated with universal equality. Like nations, women are perceived as being emotional,

less individualistic, more concerned with collectivities such as the family and community,

nonrational and, therefore, to be treated with difference. Men’s relationship with male-

defined states is considered to be that of an individual citizen’s relation to the state. On the

other hand, on account of women’s difference, and their greater perceived concer with collective entities, their relation to the state comes to be mediated by men and ceases to be a

direct one as an individual citizen. This mediation catapults women out of citizenship

conceived as equal and universal. [Thus]. . . male identity comes to be constructed in terms of

his rights as an individual citizen of the state, while female identity is predicated upon her duties to the nation/state as a mother. (Saigol, 1998)

22

Saigol implies that the differentiated hierarchies of cultural and religious nationalism,

articulated through gender distinctions in the family, contradict the universalized equality of

citizenship discourses implied in a liberal-democratic approach. Saigol’s work shows how

citizenship is ‘gendered’ based on laws and dominant discourses of culture, tradition and

custom that limit women’s access to citizenship on the basis of her relationship to a man. Her

work illustrates that opportunities for citizenship participation are limited for groups that are

disadvantaged on the basis of institutional and social practices.

Conflict, in the context of a critical democratic approach to citizenship, is a lens that can

illuminate systemic inequity and is thus is integral to effecting social change, and therefore

integral to critical democratic citizenship. A recent term coined within conflict-related work

that captures the idea of the relationship between individual and society as dialectic is conflict

transformation. Within this approach to conflict management, the micro level (among

individuals) influences and is influenced by what takes place on the macro level (society).

Therefore, change brought about through conflict on an individual basis has the potential to

influence change in society (Lederach, 1995). The individual appears to be embedded in

rather than abstracted from a social context as assumed within the liberal-democratic

paradigm. Unlike the emphasis on the resolution of conflict embedded in the liberal-

democratic paradigm, conflict transformation portrays conflict as a phenomenon that has the

capacity to provoke change in the power dynamic at an individual or group/societal level. In

contrast to short term settlement of conflict, conflict transformation strives for long-term

redress of inequity and other sources of conflict, i.e. changed relationships, and social justice

(Lederach 1995, Bickmore 2000). As inequitable power relations emerge as key to conflict,

establishing systemic conditions for equitable power relations becomes an important focus of

conflict transformation. Thus, unlike traditional liberal-democratic conflict resolution

approaches, which have tended to highlight largely communication-based skills, conflict

transformation approaches emphasize knowledge/skills and procedures as well as

establishing equitable relationships and distribution of resources on a systemic level within

approaches to conflict management.

Within such an approach to conflict management, critical democratic citizenship and conflict

become integral to one another. Democratic processes are a means to ensure equitable

relationships and resource distribution, and are therefore integral to conflict transformation

This is in contrast to liberal-democratic approaches to democracy as a means to protect

23

individual rights from infringement of others. Conflict is the manifestation of different points

of view, needs, beliefs and wishes, and thus is also integral to democracy. Leaming to deal

with conflict would be a key function of critical democratic citizens. However, in the critical

perspective this conflict learning would transcend the emphasis of communication-based

skills and strategies for short-term conflict resolution discussed above. Critical democratic

approaches project conflict learning as a manifestation of social knowledge that is rooted in

culture. This implies that the individual is embedded in a social context that can shape how

conflict is understood and how it is handled. In contrast, dominant liberal-democratic cross-

cultural conflict resolution training initiatives are “the packaging, managing and selling of

[dominant culture] social knowledge” (Lederach, 1995). Educators would need to be

conscious of, and be able to clarify, the underlying social values of conflict training.

Understanding the social context and how it shapes individuals’ understanding of conflict

resolution and transformation would need to be a key component of critical conflict

management, and thus critical democratic citizenship education. This critical-democratic

approach would be more attentive to the social context of conflict thus ‘culture’ in cross-

cultural contexts.

Education

Within education, critical democratic citizenship education transcends approaches to

citizenship education outlined within the previously described authoritarian and liberal

paradigms. Several of the educational processes for critical democratic citizenship

are those identified in the approach to citizenship education defined in the liberal-democratic

paradigm. However, an important difference in critical democratic citizenship education

approaches is the application of a critical lens to these processes, to make cultural

assumptions and inequitable power structures visible. Conflict, according to the critical-

democratic paradigm, is a catalyst for change within individuals and society. Thus conflict is

an integral element of social justice and therefore pivotal to citizenship (Lederach, 1995,

Bickmore, 2002). Thus, rather than focusing only on specific strategies or skills to resolve

conflict in discipline and decision making practices in schools, a critical democratic

citizenship education approach would emphasize and advocate the conditions required for

constructive conflict resolution within educational structures such as equitable resources,

equitable relationships, broad access to knowledge and skills, and processes for handling

conflict (Bickmore, 2002). Critical-democratic citizenship and conflict are interrelated —

critical democratic citizenship provides processes for social justice and therefore is integral to

24

equitable, sustainable conflict resolution, and conflict resolution provides an essential

condition for social justice. This critical perspective posits the implicit and explicit school

curriculum as a means for students to learn strategies and skills that would provide them with

opportunities for critical reflection and practice, and a framework within which to recognize

that conflict is integral to critical democratic citizenship (Bickmore, 2004).

In summary, a critical democratic approach highlights inequitable power structures in order

to challenge them. Conflict is integral to critical democratic citizenship as it is a lens through

which these power structures become visible. Conflict education in schools would encompass

the formal and implicit curriculum to establish conditions for constructive conflict resolution.

In following section, I discuss how the framework for critical democratic citizenship

education would appear within school educational structures. In order to do this, I draw from

scholarship discussing school processes that could develop capacities for critical democratic

citizenship in the North American context as well as scholarship on recommendations for

critical citizenship and studies on citizenship education within Pakistan.

Citizenship Education through the Implicit Curriculum

The critical democratic paradigm emphasizes the need to recognize systemic inequity that

restricts citizenship participation for some and to collectively advocate institutional measures

that can empower these disadvantaged groups. This recognition of systemic factors that shape

citizens’ access to power would translate into considering how educational structures govern

students’ access to power and thus citizenship-relevant learning. Bickmore proposes that

some of the most citizenship-relevant opportunities for students are through implicit decision

making, disciplinary and diversity practices, and resource distribution within educational

structures: these express the values of the leaders and citizens who put them in place and are

promoted through modeling, practice, regulatory sanctions and support resources in the

school. Students’ encounters with these value-laden frameworks are powerful influences on

how students learn values and skills for citizenship (Bickmore, 2003) The implicit curriculum

can promote systemic inequity by providing different groups of students’ different

opportunities for citizenship learning. Gordon, Holland and Lahelma, for example, show how

decision-making and disciplinary structures of schools may provide fewer opportunities for

democracy agency for marginalized students than for those from the dominant group

(Gordon, Holland & Lahelma, 2000). In Pakistani schools, the unavailability of resources for

25

basic school facilities denies students (in some communities more than others and girls more

than boys) their citizenship right to education (Dean, 2005). School based constraints

(teacher absenteeism, late arrival of textbooks) can play a key role in reducing student

academic achievement (Warwick and Reimers, 1995). A critical emphasis on the implicit and

formal curriculum in providing citizenship-relevant opportunities could therefore deal with

the “immediate realities” that prevent implementation of critical democratic citizenship

education in countries like Pakistan (Bush and Saltarelli, 2000). This shows that inequitable

distribution of resources at the political level and within the school would be particularly

important to consider in constructing an approach to critical democratic citizenship.

Values promoted through the implicit curriculum (in addition to the formal curriculum) can

also shape students’ learning opportunities. For example, one study found that different

notions of the ‘good citizen’ were promoted by the implicit curriculum of North American

elementary schools that were implementing the same peer mediation program (Bickmore,

2001). Varying opportunities for power sharing and critical thinking implied varying

opportunities for citizenship for diverse students. The implicit curriculum, therefore, is a

powerful socializer of citizenship-relevant values, skills and attitudes for students in schools.

Pursuing equity-based goals through the implicit curriculum would be an important

component of critical democratic citizenship education.

Educational measures are more effective if consistently implemented both within the formal

curriculum and implicit curriculum such as decision making structures and disciplinary

measures of the school (Opffer, 1997). Consistency and clarity are understood characteristics

of good teaching. For this reason, consistency in citizenship-relevant learning opportunities

within the formal and implicit curricula could enable improved critical-democratic citizenship

learning. Frameworks and approaches to human rights, peace education or citizenship

education, in the context of Pakistan, have tended to emphasize the formal or co-curriculum.

Teaching-learning strategies within the formal curriculum would develop capacities for

critical democratic citizenship by fostering critical reflection and practice. Within the formal

curriculum, this would be manifest as a focus on criticism and the deconstruction of taken-

for-granted assumptions, self-understanding and action, reconstruction of ideas, and

theory/practice reciprocity. This would involve making implicit values and assumptions

concerning the nature of learning and knowledge problematic. The emphasis would be on

26

human activity that explores the realm of human experience, as above, as well as recognizing

that knowledge is linked to its production by people (Dean, 2005). ‘Facts’ would be regarded

as “events to which we have given meaning” (Hutcheon, 1989 cited in Lather, 1990).

Therefore, critical democratic citizenship education would foster our awareness of our

location as socially situated spectators, drawing attention to the multiplicity of possible

understandings of particular texts. For example, gender is central in the shaping of our

consciousness, skills and institutions as well as the distribution of power and privilege

(Lather, 1992). Critical reflection through “reorienting the hidden curriculum” or teaching

students to question the implicit meanings behind what is taught in their textbooks, lessons

etc. could impart important skills for critical democratic citizenship (Bickmore, 2002, p. 19).

Critical reflection could take the form of studying governing power structures to develop a

heightened awareness of dominant culture and its role in shaping our knowledge and

perspectives. Students therefore could investigate how institutions and structures can support

oppressive forms of social organization (capitalism, patriarchy, the feudal system), and

curricula and school structures could be examined to see how they discriminate against

certain groups (Sears and Hughes, 1996, Abramovitz, 2002). In textbooks for Social Studies

education, content and activities that develop students’ ‘higher order’ thinking capacities

could promote critical reflection and practice (IED Policy Dialogue, 2003). More specific

approaches to critical reflection and practice within the formal curriculum are discussed

below.

The use of various sources by teachers could also help problematize the myth that what is in

the textbook is fact. This could be through the use of sources such as case studies, newspaper

articles etc. Dean (2006) pointed out the unavailability of objective or alternative resources

for teaching controversial issues in the classroom and the lack of resources in government

schools. Oral resources, however, are a rich, easily available resource that could enrich the

curriculum. Oral traditions of indigenous people, for example, have been a key source to

preserving and providing an alternative discourse to dominant curriculum in many parts of

the word. Validation of local and indigenous as well as students’ knowledge through folklore,

therefore, could be rich sources to draw on as alternative narratives to the textbook. An

anecdote illustrates how State-sanctioned ideology in textbooks is at odds with the cultural

heritage preserved in folklore: Rosser (2003) described how the Pakistani Social Studies

textbooks she analyzed vanquish a culturally diverse nation by replacing achievements of

27

ethnic or regional leaders and their achievements with achievements of Muslim leader

Muhammad bin Qasim. She describes how her conversations with Sindhis, while traveling in

Pakistan, revealed that in Sindhi folklore, bin Qasim is referred to as a tyrannical leader who

persecuted the Sindhis rather than as the hero Social Studies textbooks depict him to be.

Rosser’s anecdote suggests that folklore can provide an alternative view to the dominant

knowledge promoted in the national curriculum. Guest speakers, or field visits to examine

work actually being carried out within the local context, could also help students to

understand and validate knowledge beyond the textbook.

Education that promotes tolerance and egalitarianism is a two fold process that nurtures and

constructs inter group relations and marginalizes destructive inter group relations through the

creation and retelling of shared narratives and the exclusion of narratives that lead to

alienation and division (Bush and Saltareili, 2000). Deconstruction of existing negative

intergroup relations could begin with ‘contact’ between hostile groups under conducive

conditions to alleviate prejudice within the implicit and formal curriculum. These conditions

include a supportive environment for contact, equal status between groups within the contact

environment, prolonged and frequent contact, and cooperative environments (Allport 1954,

cited by Tal-Or et al. 2000). These interactions would need to be coupled the identification of

narratives that lead to alienation and division, by teaching students how to recognize and deal

with stereotyping, racism, discrimination and prejudice and leading students to understand

how biases against particular groups are systemically perpetuated through everyday processes

that we may otherwise be unaware of. Bias awareness would therefore not only be part of

temporary stand-alone programs but integrated within the curriculum. Affirmative measures

to include the viewpoints of marginalized groups in the formal curriculum, or establishing

structural mechanisms for equity and human rights within the schools implicit curriculum,

would also be a key component of bias awareness.

In Pakistan, liberal-democratic citizenship or peace education approaches have often

recognized and advocated the removal of biased content matter within Pakistani Social

Studies textbooks. These proposals, however, often overlook the need to teach skills that

could help students themselves identify and deconstruct narratives that promote bias

(Hoodbhoy, 2001, Salamat in Nayyar and Salim, 1991). Omission of the viewpoints of

disadvantaged groups as well as the commission of biased material, can promote prejudice

(Bush and Saltarelli, 2000). Including the viewpoints of marginalized groups within national

28

textbooks or within government schools could be tricky for educators in Pakistan, given that

the assertion of regional, ethnic or provincial or religious identity besides Muslim is

associated by the government with a threat to national identity. Revamped textbooks in

Pakistan written by the Citizenship Rights and Responsibilities Pakistan project sought to

address gender, religious and cultural bias by omitting references that may perpetuate bias or

potentially negative stereotypes of women and minority groups, and including content and

illustrations that affirmed the multiplicity of ethnicities, languages and religions in Pakistan.

Also, depictions of male figures as possessing superhuman qualities giving them sole credited

for collective accomplishments (currently the case in Social Studies textbooks) were replaced

with male and female personalities that were responsible for community upliftment (CRRP

IED Policy Dialogue, 2003, Dean, 2005). In a Pakistani context, bias awareness could entail

such inclusions combined with affirmative content and teaching-learning processes about

stereotype, discrimination and racism possibly focused on bias-based conflicts in schools

such as teasing, harassment and bullying and extending these discussions to perpetuation of

bias in society.

Conflictual issues within the formal curriculum can provide students with the opportunity for

critical reflection by learning to deal with differing interests through dissenting viewpoints.

These issues can take the shape of social concems such as slavery, sex roles, or pollution

(Engle and Ochoa, 1988). Controversy could be integrated across the curriculum through, for

example, reflection and practice with communication and perspective taking in language,

simulations of past conflicts in history lessons, or analyzing ethical issues within science

lessons (Bickmore, 1997).

Opportunities to discuss controversial issues in the classroom could help students to develop

critical thinking and communication skills by adopting a critical approach to evidence based

on exposure to different points of view, making reasoned arguments by supporting their point

of view with evidence and decision-making (Dean, 2006). Students that frequently report the

opportunity to discuss controversial issues may also develop attitudes that enable them to be

more politically active citizens. Hahn, in her study of citizenship in 5 countries, found that

classrooms where students frequently reported the opportunity to discuss controversial issues

in an environment where they perceived that several sides of the issue were presented and

where they felt more comfortable expressing their views, were more likely to develop

attitudes that could foster later civic participation, compared with students without such

29

experiences (Hahn, 1998). According to Hahn, students who had access to different points of

view through the discussion of controversial issues in the classroom could become more

trusting of other students and adults, more confident in school and political decision making

and more interested in political engagement than students who didn’t have these experiences.

A case study of four teachers who were participating in a Social Studies teacher training

course at IED in Karachi, Pakistan found that inclusion of controversial issues motivated

students to want to learn more about the issue, developed their critical thinking skills by

recognizing how facts and fiction can be interwoven, helped them to recognize the different

interests and values of different groups, developed communication skills through expressing

points of view and actively listening to the point of view of others (Dean, p. 5-6, 2006).

Dean’s study suggests that development of these skills depends on factors used to structure

the lesson: the time students had to learn more about the issue, facilitative/authoritarian role

of the teacher, discussion of the process of conducting a discussion, and a discussion versus

debate oriented context to discuss the issue.

Traditional authoritarian structural and contextual school processes posed constraints

however: Dean showed that students had limited access to balanced material and were fixed

on standpoints that supported their own views (and possibly the standpoints of groups they

were affiliated with) on the issue. Teachers lacked confidence in leading open-ended

discussion and feared parent responses when dealing with controversial issues. Dean’s study

suggested that students might possibly see social issues more as legitimate controversial

issues than school- based issues. Dean also noted, however, that schools were open to the

inclusion of controversial issues, as they believed that current issues were missing from the

curriculum. Dean’s study shows that it is possible in Pakistan to enable students to learn and

practice critical thinking with controversial issues instruction within the constraints posed by

traditional authoritarian school processes. Teachers are able to move away from traditional

rote-based methods, could engage students more in academic material as well as possibly

nurture attitudes and skills for critical democratic citizenship in Pakistan (Dean, 2006).

In Pakistan, critics of national Social Studies textbooks have highlighted that descriptions of

historical events leading to independence promote bias against Hindus and minority groups.

Teaching of controversial issues in history could be a key strategy in enabling students to

develop critical thinking abilities. For example, teachers could incorporate controversial

30

issues especially with reference to events leading to independence that in textbooks have

always been presented as fact - for example, the validity of the two-nation theory, notion of

citizenship, or human rights abuses (Ahmad, 2002).

Controversial issues would need to be discussed within the framework of a open classroom

climate classroom in which students have opportunities to deal with dissenting viewpoints

respectfully and critically. Confident, high achieving or socially privileged students can be

more prone to voice their views within an open classroom climate (Ellsworth, 1989).

Discussion of controversial issues can sometimes encourage silenced students to engage in

subject matter (Bickmore, 1993, 1996). These and other measures that would encourage

silent or marginalized students to participate — in large groups or alternative means of

participation in smaller groups or one on one basis — could provide students a safe and

inclusive classroom environment within which they could be more comfortable taking risks.

Opportunities for Student Advocacy and Decision Making

Opportunities to practice citizenship through participation in governing decision-making

structures go hand in hand with critical reflection within democratic citizenship education.

People learn through experience as much as they do through receiving and reflecting upon

information. Theory and practice reciprocity helps clarify values and goals underlying

practice and practice helps translate values and goals into action. Opportunities for student

decision-making can provide students the opportunity to develop capacities for democratic

citizenship by providing students the confidence that they can influence decision-making

structures that govern them, and develop decision-making and critical thinking skills.

Students could practice decision-making through student government, student councils, and

student-led interest groups such as co-curricular clubs or advocacy groups or service learning

programs. These could teach students attitudes and skills for democratic citizenship, if

opportunities for practice included opportunities for critical thinking. For example, in service

learning — where students participate in community service as part of the school core or co-

curriculum - critical reflection could shift the emphasis away from a sense of superiority in

working with the community and more towards a social change orientation by stimulating

reflection on the structures that contribute to the condition of disadvantaged groups. Students

could then take action to challenge these conditions, which could lead them to regard their

actions as connected to the lives of others (Kahne and Westheimer, 2000).

31

In Pakistan, decision making bodies that provide students opportunities to make significant

decisions over a sustainable period of time — i.e. a student body that can influence school

policy — were much rarer than bodies of student monitors that enforce discipline in the

absence of the teacher among the schools in one Pakistani study (Dean, 2006). In Pakistan,

student decision-making bodies might empower students who otherwise would be

indoctrinated to be passive through authoritarian schooling.

IMPORTANCE OF TEACHERS TO CRITICAL DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP

EDUCATION

Earlier in this chapter, I discussed how authoritarian educational structures are dominant in

Pakistan. In order to move toward educational structures that support learning for critical

democratic citizenship would entail reconceptualizing the role of the teacher.

Teachers play a key role in shaping how power is exercised through the implicit and formal

curriculum in the school. Teachers’ understandings of equity initiatives — such as gender or

race and citizenship within education can be an important defining factor in how they are

implemented at the school level. Teachers, through their exercise of power in school, can

sensitize students towards understandings of gender, citizenship and race (Gordon et al.,

2000, Acker, 1998). For example, gender divisions can be reproduced based on student-

teacher interactions within the classroom (teachers viewing girls to be more conscientious

and hard-working, but boys being the focus of teachers’ gaze and observation), or

teacher/school discipline strategies (being less tolerant of boisterous behaviour from girls

than boys) (Gordon et. al, 2000). Teachers’ perspectives, therefore, play a large part in

regulating sanctioned norms for appropriate citizenship or conflict behaviour. Clearly, girls

may be given greater or lesser opportunities to develop skills for critical democratic

citizenship behaviour — i.e. critical thinking, expression of point of view, advocacy -

depending on teachers’ implicit sanctioning of modest and low key behaviour from girls

(Epp, 1996). Participatory decision-making structures for students and teachers can result in

sustainable conflict resolution initiatives in schools. This highlights the importance of

including teachers in conflict resolution initiatives that promote democratic citizenship

opportunities (Opffer, 1997).

32

Teachers play an especially important role in implementing citizenship education especially

in Asian contexts (Lee, 2006, Kennedy and Fairbrother, 2004) and, in particular, the Pakistani

context (Ahmad, 2002, Dean, 2005). In Pakistan, the government curriculum prescribes

content only through textbooks, whereas the teacher can shape teaching-learning processes.

Ahmad’s recommendations for Human Rights Education in Pakistan and the Citizenship

Rights and Responsibilities Pakistan project’s approach to Citizen Education’s frameworks

for a critical citizenship education emphasized the importance of the teacher: Ahmad

emphasizes the implicit and formal curriculum in teaching human rights education and

pedagogical strategies for teachers that would enable more critical practice (Ahmad, 1991);

CRRP’s activities were also focused on building teachers’ capacities as critical educators

through teacher training and development of resource material for teachers. Teachers can

regulate students’ citizenship-relevant learning within the formal and implicit curriculum.

Within the formal curriculum, critical democratic citizenship education opportunities for

students through discussion of controversial issues were dependent on the role the teacher

played (facilitative or authoritative), and how the teacher structured the lesson (discussion

method chosen, student preparation time provided or not). In case studies of teaching learning

processes for citizenship education in eleven Pakistani schools, teachers’ rote-based teaching

(formal curriculum) and punitive disciplinary strategies (implicit curriculum) promoted

passive citizenship among students (Dean, 2006).

The emphasis on teachers in this study and in the above section does not mean that focusing

on teachers and their teaching-learning practices alone could enable critical democratic

citizenship education. Teachers are embedded within social and educational structures that

shape their practices. Advocacy at the policy level, structures that involve them in decision-

making and curricular development, development of curricula, availability and access of

resources, and training support to enable critical democratic citizenship education practices

could support teachers working in authoritarian contexts. The focus on teachers highlighted

in this study suggests that teachers, along with other school/societal processes, can regulate

students’ citizenship relevant learning and their perspectives and practices may be a good

place to start (especially with the current emphasis on notions of citizenship within Social

Studies textbooks) to explore understandings and practices of citizenship education in

Pakistan.

33

North American, Asian and Pakistan-focused approaches to critical democratic citizenship

education show that teachers can be gatekeepers of citizenship-relevant learning opportunities

for students based on their decision-making approaches, disciplinary measures, teaching

approaches and diversity practices. Given the pivotal role of teachers in shaping students

learning of citizenship in schools, critical democratic citizenship education consisting of

components outlined above would be as important for teachers as it would be for students.

In summary, critical democratic citizenship education, in contrast to liberal-democratic (or

authoritarian) education, can develop students’ and teachers’ capacity to highlight inequitable

power structures and challenge them. Within the above-described framework of critical

democratic citizenship education, managing conflict is what teaches students (and teachers)

the knowledge, values and skills for critical democratic citizenship. The goal of conflict

management within critical democratic citizenship education would be to redress social

injustices and to establish equitable conditions that would enable citizenship participation of

diverse groups.

As the implicit and formal curriculum teach students citizenship-relevant learning, the effort

to establish equitable conditions would encompass decision making structures, disciplinary

measures and resource distribution in the school. Bias awareness for students and teachers,

participation in decision-making structures, and structural mechanisms that promote human

rights and equity could be some key features of an implicit curriculum that supports

democratic citizenship education. Within the formal curriculum, students and teachers could

learn and practice skills for conflict in the form of critical thinking, dissent, controversy,

confrontation of bias and decision-making.

Critical democratic citizenship education in Pakistan would entail omitting discriminatory

material, reorienting the curriculum through inclusion of marginalized discourses,

confronting personal biases and how biases are perpetuated systemically within the formal

curriculum. Teachers’ practices that develop students’ capacities for critical democratic

citizenship education would be key. This would entail teaching- learning practices to enable

students to analyze values underlying facts, include different points of view to

‘controversialize’ knowledge by regarding and validating as knowledge sources beyond the

textbook (such as folklore, local experiences and the community). Decision making structures

or co-curricular activities in schools could enable students to participate in making decisions

through structures that govern them. Citizenship-relevant learning through disciplinary

34

structures, diversity practices and resource distribution shaped by the teacher and structures

in the school would also need to provide students opportunities to learn and practice skills

and values for critical democratic citizenship.

CONCLUSION

Conflict is integral to critical democratic citizenship, and critical democratic citizenship is

integral to conflict resolution. Components of critical democratic citizenship education would

focus on providing students with opportunities to practice critical democratic citizenship by

developing their capacity for critical thinking and power sharing. Studies on notions of

conflict and citizenship show that understandings of and means of handling conflict are a lens

through which notions of citizenship can be examined. Broader political and social factors

(which are manifested within structures at the school level) influence how conflict and

citizenship are understood and practiced. Educators play an important role in defining the

formal and implicit curriculum that shapes how conflict and citizenship are understood and

practiced by students.

The authoritarian model of citizenship tends to dominate in Pakistan, based on the national

curriculum and studies of government school structures (Warwick and Reimers, 1995, Saigol,

1993, Dean, 2000). Teacher education for citizenship in Pakistan would therefore be a

participatory process, in which teachers’ own knowledge and experiences were seen as

important and pivotal to the training exercise. Training would not be prescriptive, and trainers

not experts but rather facilitators that would help teachers to critically reflect on their own

practice and experiences (Lederach, 1995). The goal of training would be to enable educators

to find avenues and adapt components of critical democratic citizenship education that could

‘reorient the curriculum’ and challenge hierarchal classroom management and decision-

making structures within their individual contexts.

35

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

Chapter Preview:

In this chapter I will describe the research method and design of my study, which strives to

explore selected Pakistani educators’ conceptions of conflict and conflict education. Firstly,

my study examines notions of conflict and conflict education held by Course Leaders at a

Citizenship Education course held at the Institute of Educational Development — Aga Khan

University (IED-AKU) in Karachi, Pakistan by examining how these notions were embedded

in Course documents. Secondly, I explore the notions of the same concepts that were held by

six educators participating in that Citizenship Education course, through interview and Action

Plans they wrote for the course.

I begin this chapter by explaining the need for a qualitative study of educators’ perspectives. I

then explain various dimensions of the research design, such as the selection of the site and

participants, and the organization of the research process, beginning with data collection,

through to the formal interviews, analysis of participants’ Action Plans, and course

documents. I then describe the process of recording, analysing and interpreting the data. I

conclude with an outline of the limitations and strengths of my study.

Introduction

The work of Singh (1994) shows that while prior cross-cultural research has tended to

differentiate Eastern and Western societies on a dichotomized continuum between

individualist and collectivist orientations. Through his own research, Singh established that

the specificity of experience within cross-cultural contexts is important (Singh, 1994).

Contextualizing data was particularly important in my study, especially given that I was

studying a Pakistani context that was not discussed, for the most part, in the predominantly

North American literature I was using to construct my conceptual framework. Thus, I chose

qualitative research as a means to explore the conceptualisations of conflict and conflict

education of course participants of the Institute of Educational Development-Aga Khan

University (AKU-IED)’ Citizenship Education course, because qualitative research relies less

7 TED-AKU is the actual name of the institute where the course was held and Citizenship Rights and Responsibilities Pakistan project the actual name of the project. The name of the partner institutions are also

36

on “remote, inferential, empirical materials” and more on “emic, idiographic, case-based

positions, which directs... attention to the specifics of that particular case” (Marshall and

Rossman, 1999, p. 5). Qualitative interviews thus helped me to stay focused on the specificity

of these individual participants’ experiences.

In addition to interviews, I conducted analyses of participants “Action Plan” written

assignments and course planning and resource documents. Participant Action Plans were an

outline of how participants intended to implement Citizenship Education in their respective

contexts. Participant Action Plans were thus another source that reflected their

understandings of conflict and citizenship and their education, which I could use in order to

triangulate data obtained from their interviews. I also analysed course planning and resource

documents because they were representations of Course Leaders understanding of conflict

and citizenship and their education. Given that research participants were also course

participants, analysis of course documents helped me to situate participants’ responses in the

context of the course by looking at how course teachings may have influenced participants’

data. Analysis of course documents, and Action Plans thus were sources to tniangulate data

obtained from participant interviews.

My goal was to explore how individual participants understood (the links between) conflict

and citizenship and their education based on their experiences. Each participant was regarded

as an individual with specific experiences that shaped their understandings of these concepts.

In order to help me stay focused on the specificity of participants’ experiences I relied on

qualitative data obtained from their interviews and their Action Plans and Course Documents

that helped to situate participants’ responses in the context of the course and were sources to

tnangulate interview data.

1. Research Context

The premise of my study was that conflict is integral to critical-democratic citizenship and

critical-democratic citizenship education (see Literature Review Chapter). Based on this

Names of the Canadian Course Leader and research participants have been altered to protect confidentiality of those individuals.

37

premise, my study’s over all Research Questions were:

(1) How were conflict and conflict resolution education conceptualized?

(2) How were these notions seen in relationship to citizenship, in the Pakistani

educational context?

This study aimed to explore these notions through analysing course documents and

interviewing six course participants of the Certificate Course in Citizenship Education that

was part of the Citizenship Rights and Responsibilities Pakistan (CRRP) project at the

Institute for Educational Development (IED) - Aga Khan University (AKU). The Citizenship

Education course was the last leg of Citizenship Rights and Responsibilities Pakistan

(CRRP), a pilot project funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)

in partnership with the Canadian International Institute for Applied Negotiation (CIILAN) and

the International Bureau of Education (IBE). The project was implemented by the Institute

for Educational Development - Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan.

The IED Citizenship Education course was selected as the site to explore conceptions of

conflict and conflict education among Pakistani educators for two reasons. Firstly, this course

was the only effort, to my knowledge, that strove to include conflict education as a

component of citizenship education in Pakistan. Secondly, the objective of the course was to

create a cadre of educators working to promote Citizenship, Human Rights and Conflict

Resolution Education in the Pakistani landscape (Course Proposal). Also, course participants

were to implement Action Plans focused on integrating Citizenship Education into their

respective contexts. Thus I believed that these educators, who were selected on the basis of

their ability to wield influence (see below) as well as other factors, could be active in shaping

how Citizenship Education would take shape within the Pakistani educational landscape, and

thus were good candidates for my study.

TED-AKU

The Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development (AKU-IED), the

organization implementing the CRRP Project, was established in July 1993. Based in

Karachi, the AKU-IED’s major activities focus on improving the performance of teachers

and other stakeholders (education managers belonging to public and private sectors) through

38

professional development leading to school improvement. AKU-IED offers professional and

graduate programs for educators. The CRRP project would be classified as a donor-funded

professional program (IED website).

CHAN

The Canadian International Institute of Applied Negotiation (CIIAN) was a partner agency in

the CRRP project. The stated goal of the Canadian International Institute of Applied

Negotiation (CIIAN) is “the prevention and resolution of destructive conflict at the local,

national and international levels... [and it identifies] conflict competency [as] a cornerstone

for such achievement” (CIIAN website). The website also states that “the Institute is

committed to using and contributing to state of the art, empirically tested methods of conflict

resolution, conflict prevention and peacebuilding which respect that sustainable peace can

only be attained through indigenous methodologies.” Founded in 1992, the organization

provided three clinical training workshops in Conflict Resolution for the CRRP project,

including the Conflict Resolution section in the Certificate course, as part of its International

Programs (CRRP Project proposal). As course documents show that IBE did not play an

active role in the Citizenship Education course, I have not included a description of it here.

The CRRP Project

The aim of the CRRP project was to help students (who were experienced practicing

educators from various parts of Pakistan) develop attitudes, knowledge and skills required for

“the exercise of active citizenship, living and defending human rights [and] constructive

resolution of conflict... to develop a cadre of trained educators in citizenship, human rights

and conflict resolution, [to] foster dialogue about... [these concepts] among educators... [and],

through a national consultation in Pakistan, to design the way forward for a national

education program in citizenship rights and responsibilities” (CRRP Brochure). The CRRP

project, prior to the Citizenship Education course, had accomplished the following activities:

two dialogues involving policy makers, activists and educators from the public and private

sector, teacher training for its ten public and private member schools, re-development of

Grade 1-5 government Social Studies textbooks for the Sindh province, development of

supplementary material in the form of a CRRP international day calendar and a citizenship,

human rights and conflict resolution lesson plan resource for teachers. The Citizenship

39

Education course was the last major activity of the CRRP Project and was an effort to

develop a cadre of educators that would promote citizenship, human rights and conflict

resolution within the Pakistani educational sector (Course Proposal).

The Citizenship Education Certificate Course

The duration of the Citizenship Education Certificate Course was from May 21* to August

31° 2004. The objective of bringing a group of educators together through the course was to

create a sustainable body of educational leaders/innovators who would work for the

promotion of democratic citizenship, human rights and conflict resolution education within

the Pakistani community after the CRRP project ended (Course Proposal).

The course was organized into four phases. These were:

The Self Study Component (May 21 to June 6")

Participants were mailed readings and reflection questions on citizenship, human rights

and conflict resolution, which they were to complete before the next phase.

The Face-to-Face Component (June 7" to July 2")

The first two weeks of this phase dealt with concepts of Citizenship and Human Rights,

the third week on Conflict Resolution, and in the fourth week participants worked on

strategies to teach these concepts and work on Action Plans for implementing their

learning in the field. A representative from Canadian International Institute for Applied

Negotiation (CIIAN) led the week on Conflict Resolution with assistance from myself.

The core CRRP team led the remaining sessions (I was not part of this team). Data

collection for this study was carried out towards the end of the face-to-face component of

the course.

The Field Work Component (July 3” to August 3”)

Participants implemented their Action Plans within their respective contexts where they

would be visited by at least one instructor. At the end of this component they handed in a

report of how their Action Plans were implemented.

40

The E-discussion Forum (August 3" to August 31° )

Participants supported each other or exchanged ideas or reflections related to their

experience of the implementing their Action Plans within their respective contexts.

My Role

I was a member of the CRRP team as Research Assistant until two weeks before the

beginning of the course, when I adopted a voluntary role. I collected data for this study while

working as a volunteer. My involvement with the team gave me access to ‘insider’

information about the course and its participants. I did not draw directly on this ‘insider’

information in this analysis jalthough it helped to shape my background understandings:

instead, I focused on the data that I collected as a researcher. This proved to be a challenge,

as many times in my analysis I had to stop myself from disclosing insider information that

could have contributed to explaining why an aspect of the course took the form that it did.

However, I did not see it as appropriate to use the information I learned before the informed

consensus process for this research project. For this reason, I believed it necessary to outline

the extent of my involvement with the project and the course, as well as the measures I took

so that participants would distinguish researcher from instructor, in this section of my thesis.

My role within the Citizenship Rights and Responsibilities Pakistan (CRRP) project had been

as part-time Research Assistant from September 2003 until April 2004. As a Research

Assistant, I had been attending CRRP team meetings regarding the planning of the course. I

had compiled one of the assigned course readings (Conflict Resolution Spectrum reading

drawn from the Canadian International Institute for Applied Negotiation online module) for

the Conflict Resolution session of the Self Study component of the course. I also authored the

second reading (Conflict Resolution Approaches reading) for this component. I had carried

out administrative related tasks such as mailing and photocopying and coordinating

arrangements for the panel discussion — part of the Conflict Resolution session of the course.

I took on the role of volunteer two weeks before the course began. As a volunteer, I observed

many of the course sessions from the back of the classroom, answered administrative-related

questions from course participants, and participated in a few post-session meetings with the

CRRP team. During the Conflict Resolution Education section of the course I led the

41

introductory session, outlining the relationship of conflict resolution to citizenship and human

rights. I also co-led a session on ‘Causes of Conflict’ and a session on ‘Prejudice, Tolerance

and Acceptance.’ In addition, I facilitated a discussion in Urdu following a panel titled

“Conflict Resolution Education Initiatives in Pakistan” on the last day of the Conflict

Resolution Education component of the course.

Given my involvement in the instruction of the course, I had to take careful measures to

distinguish my roles (as researcher and as course leadership assistant) to participants. I did

this by emphasizing that participation in the study was not a mandatory part of the course

while handing out Consent letters to course participants, and that participation in the research

study would not affect participants’ assessment in the course. I reinforced this distance by

informing course participants that I was leaving for Canada in August thus would not be

involved in participants’ formal course assessment in any way. By taking these measures, I

hoped that it would be clear to course participants that my research study was separate from

the course, in spite of my earlier involvement in course instruction.

2. Research Participants

Educators’ perspectives about concepts such as citizenship, anti-racist education and gender

are particularly important in determining how these values may be implicitly and explicitly

communicated to students (Gordan and Lahelma, 2002, Callendar and Wright, 2000, Karsten,

2002, Kennedy et al., 2002, Acker 1998). Thus, I sought to include a diverse selection of

participants in this study. These educators’ differing theoretical perspectives and applied

strategies of conflict education proved important in providing a glimpse of how citizenship

education was taking shape in Pakistan.

Course Leaders

There were two groups of educators whose conceptions of conflict and citizenship were the

subject of the study. One group was the Course Leaders, whose views I examined indirectly

by analyzing the course documents that they designed and implemented. I chose to conduct

Document Analysis because these course documents, prepared by Course leaders, were

concrete manifestations of the leaders’ notions of conflict and citizenship that had been

shared with participants. I will provide further detail about analyzed documents in the

42

Document Analysis section below.

Course Participants (Selected Senior Pakistani Educators)

The second group of educators whose conceptions of conflict and conflict education were the

subject of this study consisted of the interviewed course participants. The participants of this

study were chosen based on their status as leaders in the Pakistani educational sector —

educators who were selected on the basis of their understanding and experience in the work

of citizenship, human rights and conflict resolution education. Course participants learnt

about the course from letters that were sent out to NGOs, schools and educational

organizations (private and public). Participants either applied or were nominated by their

organizations to attend the course. Candidates were interviewed by CRRP team members (I

was not involved in this interview process) by phone or in person, and short-listed for course

admission on the basis of strength in their professional experience, the degree to which their

position allowed them to affect change, communication skills, and prior work or conceptual

understanding in the area of citizenship, human rights, and/or conflict resolution education.

Gender balance and provincial diversity were also criteria considered in participant selection

(Course Proposal). Within this population of 24 course participants, I selected 6 as research

participants (see below).

These course (and study) participants were not reflective of the typical educator within the

Pakistani education sector. They were especially chosen as course participants on the basis of

their capacity to implement change within their individual contexts. This set of participants

grounded this study in a meaningful context: these educators were already engaged in a

discussion of conflict and conflict education through the course, based on which they were to

formulate Action Plans for implementation in their own community contexts. At the time of

the interviews for this research, all of the research participants were at the end of the face-to-

face component of the Citizenship Education certificate course. The next component was to

be the implementation of the Action Plan that participants had prepared based on their

learning in the course. This expected implementation of course learning including, in some

cases, conflict resolution education programs - as well as their leadership positions - put these

participants in position to influence how conflict and conflict education would be understood

and practised in the Pakistani educational landscape. Using this course and its participants as

the context of this study, therefore, helped to keep focused on the possibilities for change

43

within Citizenship Education in Pakistan.

I selected 6 research participants from amongst the 24 participants of the course firstly

because they were among the 18 course participants who offered (in the Information Consent

process) to participate in the study. Secondly, these six participants were planning to

implement something related to Conflict Resolution Education in their Action Plans. Thirdly,

the demographic profiles of these six people provided the widest feasible variation in terms of

gender, provincial and organizational affiliation from among course participants. I

deliberately sought this representation from various gender, religious and ethnic groups and

provincial location as Pakistan is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious context. However, the actual

sample was not as diverse as I hoped in that, all research participants, except for one, were

from large urban cities. It should be made clear that this variety does not provide a “sample”

that is representative of educators in Pakistan. As outlined above, these research participants

are not typical educators; they were selected for the course on the basis of criteria such as

prior understanding of these themes and leadership positions within their context. However,

this sample of six individuals does provide variety, as much as was possible, within

participants of this course.

3. Research Design

Research Questions

The broad Research Question informing this study is, as stated earlier: “How is conflict and

conflict resolution education conceptualised within a Pakistani educational context in

relationship to citizenship education? The more specific research question is: ‘How might

research participants (citizenship education leaders including the Course leaders) understand

the meanings and causes of conflict, strategies for responding to conflict, and the relevance of

these ideas to citizenship education?’

Data Collection

Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with selected research participants,

content analysis of the written Action Plans of research participants, and analysis of CRRP

documents. Action Plans were assignments that participants developed individually in the

44

fourth week of the course. Data are validated and strengthened by triangulation of data by the

three sources of participant interviews, Action Plans and course document analysis.

Interviews were utilized as a means to bring participants’ meanings to the surface (Spradley,

1979) and to serve as an open, democratic, two-way, informal, free-flowing process in which

[participants] could be themselves and not be bounded by roles (Merriam, 1998, p. 70). Time

constraints and the small scale of the project did not permit me to extend my study to

participants’ actual implementation of their Action Plans. However, the participants’ Action

Plans did provide me with concrete outlines of how they intended to applying their ideas of

conflict and citizenship.

The Course Document analysis involved comprehensive description and interpretation of the

conceptions of conflict and conflict education in the same form that these were available to

participants. They thus formed an important context within which to examine participants’

own responses, given that research participants were also participants in the Citizenship

Education course.

Sources of Data

® CRRP documentary material analysed included:

1. Course Proposal. This was the proposal submitted to the University board

providing the objectives rationale and structure of the three areas covered in the

course (Citizenship, Human Rights and Conflict Resolution) and its participants.

2. Course Readings. These were readings mailed to participants during the self- study

component. These included the Conflict Resolution Approaches reading, the Conflict

Resolution Spectrum reading and the Citizenship Reading.

3. Conflict Resolution Key Messages Handout. This was a handout distributed to

participants at the end of the course prepared by the Course leader of the Conflict

Resolution Education component that summarized what she believed were the most

significant teachings of the course component. From all the documents this was the

only document shared with participants during the face-to-face component of the

Citizenship Certificate Course.

4. Course Outlines of topics and activities for the Citizenship and Conflict Resolution

sections of the course prepared by Course leaders of both components. This was the

45

only document reviewed that was not shared with participants in the course.

The documents were obtained from the CRRP team office with the permission of the Project

Coordinator and from the Canadian Course leader of the Conflict Resolution Education

section of the course. I included only one of the many documents distributed to participants

during the course. Selection of the course documents was based on those that could provide

an overview of the course thus showing how the three sessions were related to each other.

The Self-Study readings were concept papers describing what Course Leaders believed it was

important for participants to know about Citizenship and Conflict Resolution and the Conflict

Resolution Key Messages a summary of the Course Leader’s main points. I chose these

documents as I believed they were representative of the Course Leaders’ theoretical premise

informing the teaching of these concepts and thus of their intentions in the course sessions.

= Interviews with selected course participants:

Interviews each lasted between one and one and a half hours, and took place (outside of class

hours) during the last week of the course (June 28" to July 2°94). I interviewed each research

participant once. The six participants are identified with pseudonyms: Alia, Iqbal, Javaid,

Mariam, Mohammed and Nargis. Three out of six interviews took place at the Institute for

Educational Development — Aga Khan University. The interviews with Nargis and Iqbal took

place in the ground floor of the hotel where the participants were staying. Mariam’s interview

took place in a conference room at the organization where she worked.

All course participants were given the Consent Letter (see Appendix 1) in which the

protection of the confidentiality of the research participant was made clear, and permission

was sought for review of Action Plans, interviews and recording of interviews. Consent

Letters were provided in English and Urdu. Course participants (those who were willing to

participate in the research) were asked to complete the researcher and participant copies of

the Consent Letter and to drop off the researcher copy in a drop box in the classroom, over a

period of two days. After Consent Letters were obtained, and final sampling decisions made,

the interview schedule was established by mutual consent with each research participant,

during tea or lunch breaks after class.

46

All six interviews were audio tape-recorded with the permission of the participants. In

accordance with participants’ wishes, five interviews were conducted in English and Alia’s

was conducted in Urdu. I used the language each participant began to speak in, to ask

participants in which language they would like the interview to be conducted.

Interview questions focused on participants’ understandings of conflict (definition and

examples of conflict, and positive and negative conflict), their positive and negative strategies

for dealing with conflict), their strategies and goals for conflict resolution education, and their

views of the relationship of conflict resolution education to citizenship. (See Appendix 2).

e Action Plans written by interviewees

Action Plans were written versions of what the research (and all course) participants planned

to mplement in the field after they completed the face-to-face component of the course.

Participants were assigned to address “brief description of content”; “focus/target”; >

99, 29, 66 “rationale”; “method and strategy”;

99, 66, advantages”; “disadvantages”; “activities of the action

plan” (plotted on a grid with the headings: “areas to introduce, activities, timeline, supporting

factors, possible challenges, success indicators”); “information gathering tools”; and

“analysis of data” (See Appendix 3 for Assignment Sheet). All course participants were

provided with a Consent Letter on which they could choose whether to allow the researcher

to analyse their Action Plans or not.

Data Analysis

I analyzed participants’ conceptions of conflict, conflict education and citizenship by drawing

on all three data sources (Interviews, Action Plans and Course Documents) to provide rich,

multi-layered data.

First, I transcribed the interviews and read the Actions Plans and Course Documents. I then

used three different coloured pencil crayons to code the information in documents and

interview transcripts into three categories — understandings of conflict (derived from

definitions and examples of positive/negative conflict), skills and strategies of conflict

47

education, and goals for conflict education. I underlined phrases or portions of interview

transcripts and documents with the colour corresponding to the category that the

phrase/portion addressed. I first tried to group together all the ‘understandings of conflict’

portions of interviews by typing them up as a separate document. I did the same for the other

two categories. However, I found that chunking data together was drawing me away from

participants’ or documents’ actual words within the context that they were spoken/written in,

which meant I risked altering the meaning of what participants were trying to say. I thus

changed strategy, and relied on categories I saw emerging as I went through the documents

and transcripts again and again examining how these analytical themes intersected with

themes I had found in scholarly literature.

Analysis

My analysis of interview and documentary data examined research participants’ various

theoretical orientations and perspectives for understanding conflict and its relationship to

citizenship. I examined how participants’ responses (orally and/or in the documents)

intersected with analytical categories outlined in my Literature Review to construct an

analysis of participants’/Course leaders’ conceptions of conflict and citizenship. My main

analytical categories became:

1. Critical Democratic Citizenship: Citizens within this notion of citizenship are

embedded in a historical/social context and citizenship action is collective action to

redress structural inequalities. Citizens appear as agents of change as they are

influenced (by political, economic and social systems) and as they influence larger

society (how people live within these structures). Conflict, through critical

examination of societal structures, expressions of dissent, and active expression of

different needs, interests and beliefs, appears as a pivotal part of citizenship.

2. Authoritarian Conflict Management: This framework emphasises a value-free

approach to knowledge through rote-based, exam-focused approaches to teaching and

learning. Decision-making and disciplinary structures in the school emphasize the

containment of violence through authoritarian means. Obedience oriented

programs/Social skills/Anger management or pull out programs are associated with

this approach. Conflict is undesirable to citizenship, and critical-democratic

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citizenship opportunities for students would be restricted to the provision of a safe

environment.

3. Liberal-Democratic Conflict Resolution: This framework emphasizes the

importance of individual experience in teaching-learning processes. Approaches to

conflict management emphasize resolution through interpersonal skills and pre-

arranged procedures for settling current disputes. Extra-curricular mediation or social

skills programs are seen as effective conflict resolution education methods. Conflict is

seen as something to be prevented or resolved. Capacities for critical-democratic

citizenship embedded in this view are the development of communication skills to

deal with interpersonal conflict or experiential opportunities such as student

participation in activities such as formal conflict resolution methods, student

governance, or active participation in the classroom or community service.

4. Critical-Democratic Conflict Transformation: This framework emphasizes the

value-laden nature of knowledge drawing on teaching-learning processes that could

illuminate inequitable power structures. This would translate into an educational

approach that regards the explicit (formal) and implicit (school disciplinary measures

and decision making structures) curricular focus as providing students with

citizenship-relevant learning opportunities. These would involve strategies that

emphasize critical reflection and practice such as those which reorient the hidden

curriculum, emphasize bias awareness, invite controversy in the classroom and

provide students opportunities for advocacy and decision-making thus providing

students opportunities for critical reflection and practice. Conflict, appears as having

the capacity to transform relationships and social change. This approach would help

develop students capacities for critical democratic citizenship by developing skills and

establishing conditions focused on lasting initiatives for social justice through

understanding the underlying causes of conflict and working to redress structural

inequalities.

It is important to note that I applied these analytical categories in a very flexible way, and

there were other emergent themes that did not fit neatly into these categories. The purpose of

an exploratory study such as this one is to learn about how research participants interpret and

help me to reinterpret these concepts. Thus I did not assume beforehand that the above

49

analytical categories would fit the data that actually emerged from this study, especially as

these categories arise from work in a largely North American context, whereas my research

was based in the Pakistani context. Research participants’ actual answers tended to overlap

categories, or require that categories be understood differently, or changed, or new ones

created. Thus although it was important to make my initial analytical framework for

understanding different approaches to conflict resolution explicit, as should any researcher, it

is also important to emphasize that these categories did not completely bind my analyses.

4. Limitations of the study

'Thin' data

One of the biggest limitations of this study is ‘thin’ data. This was a small, exploratory study

within only a few special participants. In course document analysis, I was able to base my

analysis on a range of comprehensive documents. However, following up this document

analysis by interviewing Course Leaders could have provided Course leaders with an

opportunity to address, explain and correct assumptions of the conceptions of conflict and

citizenship that I drew from their documents. For instance, the Course leader of the Conflict

component deliberately omitted a focus on peer mediation as a conflict resolution strategy in

the session as she believed that in the Pakistani context it might be used a strategy that

benefited only ‘good’ students (personal communication). This shows that the approach that

the Course leader adopted in the course was deliberate and grounded in what she knew about

the Pakistani educational context. As the Conflict Course leader had vast experience in cross-

cultural training of conflict resolution, an interview would have given her the chance to

explain the choices she made in approaching Conflict Resolution the way she did in the

Pakistani context.

Research participants’ conceptions were somewhat thinly represented by the interviews and

Action Plan analysis. Firstly, research participants’ Action Plans were much less detailed than

I had expected. According to the course assignment, Action Plans were to be detailed outlines

of how participants planned to implement what they had learnt during the course. Although

the Action Plans of five out of six participants did follow this format (Javaid's Action Plan

was a two-page outline of ‘how’ he would go about his implementation rather than ‘what’ he

was planning to do), they did not contain the thoughtful and detailed information that I had

anticipated. This may have been because participants had fairly little time to work on these

50

plans, given that they were to be submitted at the end of the intensive face-face component of

the course.

Secondly, single one and a half hour interviews with participants did not seem sufficient to

provide detailed insight into participants’ views on conflict and conflict education, given that

the Action Plans were not so detailed. Thus follow-up interviews, to ask participants to

further elaborate on concepts that they had touched on in the first set of interviews, would

have provided me with ‘richer’ and more specific data. Also, more structured questions could

have also helped obtain more focused data. For example, the segment of the interview asking

participants about ‘options for handling conflict’ went off in different directions for each

participant. I spent more time talking about how critical thinking was understood with

Mariam and Iqbal than with the other participants. This resulted in data seeming to imply that

critical thinking as a strategy was considered important for conflict resolution education by

these two participants, whereas other participants might have considered it important but had

not talked about it. I have tried, however, to point out such issues in my data analysis. I could

have asked participants about specific strategies, such as controversial issues and bias

awareness, rather than leaving the discussion more open-ended, as this would have provided

me with participants’ views on a specific set of concepts and activities rather than a range of

varied ideas. At the same time, it is important to note in an exploratory study adopting a rigid

structure for the interviews also could have prevented me from obtaining the “free flow of

ideas” which I was seeking. Thus semi-structured interviews also may well have been an

advantage, helping me to identify emerging concepts that could be examined more

specifically in subsequent studies.

Influence of the Course on Participant Interviews

Course influence inevitably played a role in participant responses. This is not necessarily a

disadvantage of this study, as it was on this premise that I chose a particular group of

participants. However, the fact that I was briefly an instructor for this course may have been a

disadvantage, as participants may have formulated their answers, to a degree, based on what

they felt I wanted to hear. I base this observation on the fact that two out of the six

participants asked, “how they did” after we finished the interview. Drawing on two data

sources, however, may have helped me address this challenge. Also, the influence of the

course is not completely a disadvantage, as my research question addresses an atypical,

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specific group of educators, and this situates the study in a meaningful context. It does,

however, restrict the applicability of the findings of this study to a very specialized group.

Conclusion

In this chapter I discussed the methodology used in my study and outlined some of the

shortcomings of these methods, which included ‘thin’ data and the course and researcher’s

probable influence on participant responses. The main strengths of my methodology,

however, lie in my use of qualitative design, which helped me obtain ‘rich’ data focused on

the specificity of educators’ meanings. Secondly, my study was grounded in a meaningful

context — leading, committed educators who were already involved in a course striving to

implement citizenship education in the Pakistani context. Thirdly, triangulation of data, albeit

with its shortcomings, enabled me to compile ‘thicker’ data than if I had been working from a

single data source. The next chapter details how this methodology was put to use in the

Document Analysis.

32

CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS OF COURSE DOCUMENTS

Preview

My goal in this thesis research is to understand the conceptions and roles of conflict and

social context that are embedded in the 2003 Citizenship Certificate Course that was part of

the Citizenship Rights and Responsibilities Pakistan project (CRRP) held at the Institute of

Educational Development (IED), Aga Khan University (AKU) by, examining the documents

prepared by course leaders and the viewpoints of selected course participants. In this chapter,

I describe and analyze the course documents. (In the next chapter, I will examine 6 selected

participants' conceptions of the same concepts, as reflected in interviews and the Action Plans

interviewees prepared as a course assignment.) Specifically, in this chapter I analyze the

language used in course overview documents, handouts, and assigned readings: how the

authors of these documents describe conflict and citizenship, and the strategies and goals for

conflict education and citizenship education they promote. I use the concepts of critical

democratic citizenship and the paradigms of authoritarianism, liberal-democracy and critical-

democracy in the citizenship and conflict management education as a framework for analysis

of these Citizenship Certificate Course materials.

As discussed in the Methodology section, the Citizenship Certificate Course was divided into

three areas: Citizenship, Human Rights, Conflict Resolution. As the Citizenship and Human

Rights were prepared and led by the CRRP team I will refer to both as one section in this

study. A representative from the Canadian International Institute for Applied Negotiation led

the Conflict Resolution section of the certificate course. As discussed in the Methodology

section, the Course documents analysed in this chapter do not include the readings distributed

to the participants during the course. This chapter focuses on six course documents, out of

which all but one (the Key Messages document which was distributed to participants after the

course took place) were prepared and distributed before the face-face component of the

Citizenship Certificate Course began. These documents are: (1) Course Proposal, (2) Course

Outline for Citizenship and Human Rights section (3) Course Outline for Conflict Resolution

section, (4) Citizenship Reading for Self Study Component (5) Conflict Resolution Spectrum

Reading for Self Study Component (6) Conflict Resolution Approaches Reading for Self

Study Component (7) Conflict Resolution Key Messages Document for Face to Face

Component (See Table 1).

53

WHAT IS CITIZENSHIP?

In this section I will examine how documents implementing the Citizenship component of the

IED course implemented the skills and concepts I defined in the Chapter 2 as ‘critical

democratic citizenship’.

This section focuses on the course documents selected for analysis that are relevant and were

available to the Citizenship session of the course. These are (1) the Course Proposal (focusing

on the Introduction, Objectives and section on Citizenship Education) (2) Citizenship

Reading and, (3) the Citizenship Course Outline. The Course Proposal described Course

leaders’ conceptualizations and intentions of the course while the Citizenship Course Outline

and Citizenship Reading defined in specific form the shape the course took. As discussed in

the Methodology chapter, I chose to focus on documents that I believed most clearly

illustrated Course leaders understandings of citizenship and conflict and their education.

Preparatory documents such as the Course Proposal and Course Outlines, in providing an

overview of the whole course, showed how Course Leaders understood citizenship and

conflict resolution to be linked. Self-study readings were short concept papers introducing

participants to concepts of citizenship and conflict prepared by Course Leaders and thus

provided the rationale for the notion of citizenship and citizenship education that they would

be trying to advocate in the Citizenship Certificate course.

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Table 1: Course Documents Analyzed

Document Name Authors Length | Headings

Course Proposal CRRP Team 7 pages | 1. Course Rationale and Approach and Debbie 2. Course Goals James® 3. Course Objectives and Course Content

(a) Theme 1: Citizenship

(b) Theme 2: Human Rights

(c) Theme 3: Conflict (d) Pedagogy (e) Course Components

(f) Assignments (g) Course Participants.

Citizenship Reading CRRP Team 2 pages | 1.What Is Citizenship?

2.Global Citizenship 3.What Is Citizenship Education 4.Rationale for Citizenship Education

Conflict Resolution CHAN 11 1. The Nature of Conflict : (condensed by | pages 2. Conflict Resolution Spectrum

Spectrum Reading Fazilat Sayani) 3. Responses to Conflict

4. Conflict and Communication

Key Messages Handout | Debbie James 5 pages | 1. Nature of Conflict

2. Resolution of Conflict 3. Communication and Conflict 4. Power

5. Nature of Anger/Management of Anger — Ours

and Others 6. Justice 7. Tolerance 8. Minimum Skills and Strategies (Primary,

Intermediate and Secondary)

Table 2: Course Objectives Quoted in Course Proposal

1. Develop a critical understanding of key concepts of citizenship and human rights and their relation to people’s lives in schools, communities and society

2. Develop a critical understanding of key concepts of peace, conflict and violence at different levels of society including that of students and educators in schools

3. Be able to critically examine issues with regard to citizenship and human rights in their

schools and their local, national and global communities 4. Gain an enhanced knowledge of a variety of strategies for citizenship, human rights and

conflict resolution 5. Acquire skill of inquiry, communication, debate, reflection, advocacy, conflict negotiation

and mediation 6. Design, implement and educate school/community projects of service learning and social

action to promote active and responsible citizenship

7. Create a network among course participants themselves and partner with others

working in the fields to promote citizenship, human rights and conflict resolution education

Source: CRRP team, Course Proposal for Citizenship Education Course, March 2004

® This is the pseudonym that I will be using for the Canadian representative from CILAN

55

The Citizen’s Place in the Historical and Social Context

Leaders of the Citizenship section, in the resource documents they prepared, portrayed the

citizen as embedded within a local, national and international context with a historical

background. This was evident, firstly, through the explanation of citizenship, in the section

on Citizenship in the Course Proposal, as a term with a historical background that may be

interpreted differently in different contexts, not an absolute term. Citizenship, in the Course

Rationale section of the Course Proposal, was described as a “contested notion in general and

in Pakistan in particular” (Course Proposal, pg. 2). Furthermore, the rationale suggested that

citizenship and the resulting nghts and responsibilities have “evolved over time”. Later, in a

more detailed section on Citizenship Education, (See Table 1 for Course Proposal Headings),

it was proposed that students would be engaged in an “in-depth discussion on the various

‘definitions’ of citizenship’” and “debate about the contested notion of citizenship in

Pakistan”. Participants would “learn about how the notion of citizenship and resulting nghts

and responsibilities has evolved over time”. Also, participants would be “invited to [critically

reflect] on how to become reflective, responsible and active citizens” and “engage in a

critical review of citizenship education in our schools and communities with a view to

strategizing their roles as citizenship educators in these contexts”. Citizenship, as projected in

the Course Proposal proposed employing conflictual strategies that entailed critical reflection

such as examining various perspectives and dissenting viewpoints and controversies about

citizenship. The Proposal also proposed participatory strategies to engage participants in

devising a model for citizenship based on their experiences thus valuing their experiences and

knowledge.

The Citizenship Reading and Course Outline also described citizenship as a term with a

historical and social background. For example, the Course Outline suggested that participants

would be asked in Week 1 of the course to explore how citizenship was just one part of an

individual’s identity. Similarly, the Citizenship Reading highlighted various operational

levels of citizenship, projecting it as a multi-faceted term. Citizenship was described as “a

status”:

“an individual who has the status of being a citizen will have a number of rights. That status of a citizen also means that the individual will have certain responsibilities. Members of a society or community that have that status will have rights and responsibilities too.”

56

(Citizenship Reading, pg. 1)

Citizenship was also described as a legal and political status, such as “a set of rights and

liberties that the State grants its citizens” and as something that “involves citizen’s loyalty to

the State that protects him/her and grants civic rights.” Citizenship was also described as a

social role. For example, “a citizen is expected to perform a number of duties” and “a citizen

can have a number of different relationships... and therefore can have different types of

responsibilities.” The Citizenship Reading also described citizenship as global: “citizens”

ideas and actions in any country can have a global effect such as on the environment and

trade.” (ibid) The Citizenship Reading and Course Outline depicted citizenship as embodying

different sets of relationships, that required different types of active citizenship participation.

Citizenship therefore appeared as an active rather than passive practice.

To view citizens as embedded within a social context, not “unfettered “‘, “free” individuals, is

a key concept of ‘critical democratic citizenship’. Course leaders emphasized that citizen and

citizenship were constructs of their context, by defining it as a term whose meaning had

“evolved” in the Course Proposal, defining it as a series of relationships in the Citizenship

Reading, examining how citizenship is one aspect of an individuals’ identity in course

learning exercises, and critically analysing rights and responsibilities in the Pakistani

Constitution in the Course Outline. In doing so, Course leaders projected citizenship as a

“public realm’ where citizens can interact without having to divorce themselves from their

social reality. Rather than understanding citizenship as a singular relationship between

individual and the State, then, citizenship emerged here as a platform upon which people with

complex identities could act collectively.

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Table 3: Course Outline’

Course Topics My Interpretation of

Citizenship Education

Components

Checking Human Rights temperature in Schools, What Is | What Is Citizenship? Citizenship Citizenship as critical

Pakistan. Constitution, Identity and Citizenship, Forms of | thinking and advocacy within Govt. local Pakistani and broader Human Rights in Social and Local Context, Human

Rights documents

What is State, Forms of Govt., Political Rights, Visit to

GEO (24 hours news channel) Civil Society (Definition, Functions, In Pakistan), Visit

to OPP Media (Kinds, Relation. to Social Life), Media Literacy Economics (Definition, Key Concepts, Different. Systems, Debt and Globalization)

Contd.

social context

Citizenship Education (What It Is and Approaches) Civil Society at School Level (Student Chibs, Advocacy)

How is Citizenship Taught and Practised? Schools prepare students for

citizenship action in society

Relationship of Conflict to Citizenship and Human Rights, Foundation

Abilities and Key Components Conflict (Definition, Sources, Key Components: Ways of

Dealing, Communication and Emotions, Problem

Solving Processes)

Collaborative Processes, Anger Management, Power and Conflict

Prejudice Tolerance and Acceptance, Review of Key

Components, Conflict Resolution Education and Peace

Education Initiatives in Pakistan

Conflict Resolution Education Workshops (Participants

prepare workshops on one of the key components) How Do Conflict Skills Fit

In?

Conflict resolution teaches

predominantly

communication-based skills

for interpersonal conflict

Citizens as Agents of Change

The second way in which Course leaders projected citizens, in the Course Proposal, Reading

and Course Outline, was as individuals capable of influencing change in society. They did

this by highlighting connections between people’s everyday lives (the local) and the larger

social context. The Course Objectives in the Course Proposal, for example, showed that the

aim was to “develop a critical understanding of key concepts of citizenship and human rights

° These topics were drawn from two different versions of Course Outlines for the Citizenship section and one version of the Conflict Resolution section. I did not divide the topics day-wise because the two different versions of the Citizenship Course Outlines (which contained the same topics but the second version gave more detail on the concepts to be dealt with each day) divided topics differently in the week.

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and their relation to people’s lives in schools, communities and society.” These Objectives

included that participants would “be able to critically examine issues with regard to

citizenship and human rights in their schools and their local, national and global

communities” (see Table 2: Course Objectives Quoted in Course Proposal). The Citizenship

Reading also identified school as one of the institutions that can help prepare students for

citizenship:

A democratic society relies on the knowledge, skills, values, attitudes and actions of its

citizens and those they vote into office. Many institutions can help do this — family, media and community groups. Research shows that if students can acquire this knowledge, skills,

values, attitudes and actions in school, it can prepare them for democratic citizenship.

(Rationale for Citizenship Education, Course Reading, p. 1)

For example, the Outline specified that in the first week of the Course, participants were

encouraged to draw links between citizenship and human rights — through assessing the

“human rights temperature” in their schools. The Outline promoted this integration of human

rights with Conflict Resolution Education by examining “human rights issues in society,

[taking a] critical look at the human rights instruments/documents and human rights issues in

the local context and some responses” (Course Outline, p. 1) By encouraging participants to

critically regard how everyday processes in citizens lives were governed, and thus could

challenge, broader social processes the course documents projected citizens as agents of

change.

The ability of the citizen to influence social change was a key idea emerging from

Citizenship section course resource documents. The Course leaders (document authors)

portrayed the individual and society as in a dialectic relationship, with society influencing the

individual and individuals as agents of change capable of wielding influence on society. For

example, the Citizenship Course Outline proposed that participants would critically examine

political, economic and social structures such as media and civil society and their relationship

to democracy (items 1 and 3 in Table 2).

The Citizenship Course Outline then focused on citizenship at the school level by identifying

strategies for ‘amateur’ citizenship practice (student clubs and service learning) and outlining

a variety of approaches to Citizenship Education. Participants were encouraged to consider

how the broader context of human rights could be manifested as skills and practices for

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democratic citizenship at the school level. This linked individual action on a micro level with

social change on a macro level and vice versa. The Citizenship Course Outline portrayed

schools as microcosms of society and thus key sites for the learning and practice of

democratic citizenship and also as sites where social structures were replicated but could also

be challenged.

Citizenship Education documents also emphasized interconnections between the local and

social context by saying that social processes such as the home, school and community

promoted the notions of citizenship. They projected a notion of ‘critical democratic citizens’

as capable of participating in the decision-making structures that governed them, rather than

associating citizenship action exclusively with members of parliament.

Course documents projected social justice as the goal for citizenship and citizenship

education by presenting human rights as the broader frame of reference for citizenship. For

example, section topics such as the examination of human rights in relation to the Pakistani

Constitution, as well the analysis of the role of civil society in promoting and securing human

rights, presented human rights as a goal, as well as the United Nations Declaration of Human

Rights (UNHDR) as a reference point, for constructing active citizenship. Linking citizenship

to human rights was an alternative to understanding citizenship primarily as a set of rights

and responsibilities to the State or preoccupation with patriotic national identity. Course

documents highlighted the international context of human rights as a barometer against which

course participants could critically review citizens’ rights and responsibilities and develop

their models of critical democratic citizens.

WHAT IS THE ROLE OF CONFLICT AND CONFLICT SKILLS?

In this section, I will discuss the emerging approach to conflict resolution education by

drawing on approaches to conflict resolution education within ‘authoritarian’, ‘liberal

democratic’ and ‘critical democratic’ citizenship paradigms as a framework for my analysis. I

will discuss how the Conflict Resolution session of the IED Citizenship Education course

projected a notion of citizenship that did not attend to citizen agency or the social context in

the manner apparent in the Citizenship Education component of the “same” course.

The documents analysed in this section are (1) Course Proposal (with a focus on the

60

Introduction, Objectives and the Conflict Resolution section), (2) Conflict Resolution

Approaches reading given to participants for the Self Study component, (3) the Conflict

Resolution Spectrum reading mailed to participants for the Self Study component, (4) the

Conflict Resolution section Course Outline and (5) the Key Messages document distributed

to participants at the end of the face-to-face component of the course. Analyzed documents

relevant to the Conflict Resolution section focused on documents that provided an overview

of the entire course — e.g. the Course Proposal and Conflict Resolution Session Outline - as

this could show how course leaders saw citizenship and conflict resolution to be related. I

also analysed the Conflict Resolution Key Messages document — a document summarizing

the main points of the Conflict Resolution session - along with the two readings that were to

provide participants an introduction to Conflict Resolution for the Self Study as I believed all

three summarized the Course leaders conceptualizations and adopted approach.

Unlike the Citizenship session course documents, there were several inconsistencies among

the Conflict Resolution Approaches reading, the Course Proposal Objectives and the

remaining Conflict Resolution session documents. The Conflict Resolution section in the

Course Proposal, Conflict Resolution Spectrum Reading, Conflict Resolution Session Course

Outline and the Conflict Resolution Key Messages document, which highlighted the key

concepts discussed in the Conflict Resolution session, were consistent with one another, and

thus, I conclude, more accurately represented this course section's main notions of conflict

and citizenship. I will briefly discuss the differences between the documents to illustrate how

contradictory goals can be embedded in the practice of conflict education.

Differences Among Conflict Course Documents

The Course Proposal introduction and objectives, the stated authors of which were the CRRP

team and the Canadian representative, and Conflict Resolution Approaches Reading, that was

authored by myself, explored conflict as an interpersonal and a social phenomenon, by

proposing to examine the interrelation between concepts such as conflict, peace and violence

to explore “the impacts of Conflict Resolution Education on students, educators and the

school ethos as well as interconnectedness to citizenship and human rights” (Introduction,

Course Proposal, p. 1). The introductory part of this document proposed to link examination

of conflict in school and society with “an equally strong focus... on acquiring the requisite

attitudes and skills to deal with conflict constructively, whether in the home, school or larger

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community.” Similarly, the Conflict Resolution Approaches reading discussed establishing

equitable decision-making structures in the school, rather than exclusively focusing on

individual communication based skills. For example, it outlined different approaches to

implementing Conflict Resolution Education that focused on explicit and implicit school

processes. The Rationale for the Conflict Resolution Education section in the Conflict

Resolution Approaches reading also connected Conflict Resolution Education to ‘critical

democratic citizenship’, by describing schools as the “first public place were students interact

with people of different kinds” and therefore an important place for students to learn how to

deal with “conflicting interests and different viewpoints, evaluate solution options and

employ management and negotiation procedures” (Rationale for Conflict Resolution

Education, Conflict Resolution Approaches reading, p. 2). The following section on forms of

CRE in the reading used Kathy Bickmore’s peacekeeping, peacemaking and peacebuilding

approaches to frame approaches to different approaches to conflict resolution and their

implications for citizenship (Bickmore, 2003). The last section discussed implementing

Conflict Resolution Education as a separate course, as mediation programs, as a peaceable

classroom or a peaceable school. The whole school approach was identified as the most

effective for long-term implementation of conflict resolution education through decision-

making and disciplinary structures for students and teachers in the school.

The Introduction and Objectives in the Course Proposal portrayed conflict as a social

phenomenon by linking conflict resolution, human rights and citizenship. The Conflict

Resolution Approaches Reading emphasized the importance of the implementation process,

focusing less on what Conflict Resolution Education could consist of (how to) and more on

the different ways Conflict Resolution Education could be implemented (what it could look

like). The Conflict Resolution Approaches Reading also contrasted the different possible

implementation goals of Conflict Resolution Education focused on how Conflict Resolution

Education was implemented could lead to different goals by outlining Bickmore’s

peacekeeping, peacemaking and peacebuilding approaches. The material suggested that a

whole school approach could encourage participants to recognize the establishment of long

term conditions for Conflict Resolution Education through equitable distribution of resources,

decision making systems, and working in conjunction with knowledge and processes for

constructive conflict resolution within a school community (Bickmore, 2003).

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Thus the Conflict Resolution Approaches Reading, projected a loosely structured approach to

Conflict Resolution Education. This would offer participants’ room to interpret and

implement what they believed was applicable to their contexts. However, the Conflict

Resolution Approaches Reading did not consistently identify equitable conditions as a major

component of Conflict Resolution Education. For example, the section titled “Major

Components” of the Conflict Resolution Approaches Reading focused on the importance of

communication and conflict. However, one section titled “Approaches to Conflict Resolution

Education” identified peacebuilding as the most evolved framework based on its

incorporation of bias awareness and gender equity to address structural issues that may

underlie conflict. Although a whole school approach was identified as the preferred approach

to implementing Conflict Resolution Education, the section on “Implementation for Conflict

Resolution Education” focused on establishing equitable relationships among students and

teachers and ignored the need to address structural issues that may inhibit such a relationship

or may be manifested as conflict among students or teachers.

The Introduction and Objectives of the Course Proposal and the Conflict Resolution

Approaches Reading suggested that conflict resolution was seen as the establishment of an

equitable society by emphasizing links between conflict resolution and human rights and

citizenship in the Course Proposal, and identifying peacebuilding — or the establishment of

equitable conditions in the school — as the preferred framework for conflict resolution. These

two documents suggested that conflict resolution entailed the redress of structural inequalities

(social conflict) along with short-term resolution of interpersonal conflict through

communication-based strategies. This portrayal of conflict resolution in the Course Proposal

and Conflict Resolution Approaches Reading, however, was inconsistent within the

documents as well as in comparison to the remaining Conflict Resolution session documents

analyzed. The portrayal of conflict in the Introduction and Objectives of the Course Proposal

and the Conflict Resolution Approaches Reading was therefore less significant in helping

understanding Course leaders’ intentions for conflict resolution than the other Conflict

Resolution section documents which were consistent with each other and thus better

representatives of these intentions.

The second group of Conflict Resolution section documents were (1) Conflict Resolution

Session Outline (2) Conflict Resolution Spectrum Reading and (3) Conflict Resolution

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section Key Messages Handout. These predominantly referred to conflict as an interpersonal

phenomenon by focusing on communication-based knowledge, skills and procedures to deal

with interpersonal conflict. In the Conflict Resolution section in the Course Proposal, for

example, Conflict Resolution Education was described as an approach that “teaches us skills

to prevent or resolve conflict through skills such as communication, negotiation and

mediation. We learn how to understand our own interests and recognize those of others; how

to assert our points of view and critically assess the point of view of others” demonstrates an

interpersonal focus. Similarly, a reflection activity in the introductory section of the Conflict

Resolution Spectrum Reading clearly established its interpersonal focus by asking readers to

“think about an interpersonal conflict between yourself and someone else. What were some

of the sources of that conflict? Was the conflict latent or manifest?” The Reading then

introduced readers to the “Conflict Cycle” as the rationale for its approach to CRE: “if you

were to see positive effects from your response to conflict, your beliefs and attitudes toward it

would likely be positive. [In the following sections] you will see how to change your reaction

to conflict in order to improve its outcomes.” The Conflict Resolution Spectrum Reading, the

Conflict Resolution Course Outline and the Conflict Resolution section Key Messages

Handout went on to identify communication-based approaches to conflict as “Key

Components”. They detailed common responses to conflict (avoid, compromise, collaborate),

structured approaches to conflict resolution (negotiation, mediation, arbitration and

adjucation), anger management and a section on active listening.

The predominant focus of the Conflict Resolution component, as apparent from the Course

Outline, the Conflict Resolution Spectrum reading and the Conflict Resolution Key Messages

document, was on conflict as an interpersonal phenomenon. This projected a concept of

citizenship that did not attend to agency or social context, unlike critical democratic

citizenship. What was excluded from this group of readings rather than what was included is

what limited this course session’s critical democratic citizenship potential. Explicit teaching

of generalizable skills and procedures certainly can be a key component of Conflict

Resolution Education. However coupling such Conflict Resolution Education knowledge and

skills with a focus on retributive justice, such as equitable relationships and resource

distribution, would be key in providing opportunities to learn and practice critical democratic

citizenship. The Conflict Resolution Spectrum reading, the Conflict Resolution Course

Outline and Key Messages Handout recognized that conflict could be social by outlining

social and interpersonal sources of conflict. However the documents attributed the identified

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approach to conflict in the reading to the Conflict Cycle that presented the handling of

conflict to be in the hands of the individual, without considering the influence of other social

factors. The emerging idea here seemed to be that if the individual reacted to conflict in a

positive manner, conflict would be thought of as a positive phenomenon - thus the

importance of learning interpersonal skills. The focus on “generic” interpersonal conflict

abstracted the individual from their social context. Short-term resolution of conflict emerged

as a goal, in contrast with a longer term goal of social justice.

HOW IS CITIZENSHIP TAUGHT AND PRACTICED?

The citizenship component of the course employed participatory strategies focused on

engaging participants in critical reflection and practice and strategizing an approach to

citizenship education drawing on their experience. In comparison, the Conflict Resolution

Spectrum Reading, the Conflict Course Outline and the Key Messages document adopted a

comparatively prescriptive approach by outlining specific communication skills as Conflict

Resolution Education. This showed that the Citizenship and Conflict Resolution sessions of

the course supported contradictory goals for the practice of citizenship — the former focused

on strategies that emphasized ‘critical democratic citizenship’ through clarifying values

underlying citizenship education practice, the latter on strategies that supported skills and

values that emphasized the resolution of conflict resolution supporting the liberal-democratic

paradigm These contradictory goals highlighted how different notions of citizenship can be

promoted within the “same” course and reinforced the importance of the clarification of

political and cultural goals underlying Citizenship Education — a key component of ‘critical

democratic citizenship education.’

The Citizenship section course documents portrayed Citizenship Education as the

overarching goal of education rather than only as a subject that needed to be integrated within

the school curriculum. The Citizenship Reading, for example, described Citizenship

Education as:

...a set of practices and activities aimed at educating children, youth and adults so that they have knowledge, skills and attitudes required to participate actively and responsibly in the

social, civil and political affairs of their society by assuming and exercising their rights and

responsibilities. This definition sees citizenship education not just as a school subject, or integration within school subjects but a major aim of education, which is a lifelong process

(Citizenship Reading, p.1).

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In stating that Citizenship Education was to be a “lifelong process” for “youth and adults”,

the authors of this documents projected Citizenship Education to be contextualized in larger

society, not only a school-based phenomenon focused on students. In identifying schools as

just one of the institutions teaching knowledge, skills, values, attitudes and actions for critical

democratic citizenship, the Course leaders established citizenship education to be education

for citizenship in society as opposed to a school-based activity.

The Citizenship Education Course Proposal, described citizenship as taught through home,

school and community. It identified the goal of citizenship education as “the teaching of

knowledge, skills and attitudes to enable learners to participate critically and actively in the

citizenship process” (Proposal, p. 2). All the Citizenship and some of the Conflict Resolution

Education documents consistently focused on critical thinking and citizenship education

through various social institutions in society. The section on Citizenship Education in the

Course Proposal, as discussed above, advocated participatory strategies such as “in-depth

32 66 discussion... on definitions of citizenship”, “stimulating debate... [on] contested notion of

39 66

citizenship”, “critical reflection... [on] how to become... active citizens”, “critical review >

29 6 [of]... Citizenship Education in our schools and communities”, “strategizing [participants’]

roles as citizenship educators”, “sharing necessary strategies” and “identifying challenges to

CRE, and design[ing], implement[ing] and evaluat[ing] a school community/project”.

Outlined sections topics in the Course Outline corresponded with the strategies outlined in

the Course Proposal focusing on topics. These also proposed centralizing conflict through

strategies that provided students an opportunity to examine different perspectives and

viewpoints about citizenship and critically strategizing an approach to citizenship education

emphasizing the needs of their particular context (See Table 3)

Language and strategies in Citizenship Course Outline emphasized a “reflection and practice”

approach that sought to centralize participants’ knowledge and experiences. The Citizenship

Course Outline proposed, “finding out what course participants know about Citizenship,

Human Rights and Conflict Resolution” and “finding out temperature of school/classroom”

and “establishing norms/rules for a learner-friendly classroom”. Critical analysis was

identified as a key component on content-based sessions. For example, participants would be

encouraged to take a “critical look” at “rights and responsibilities in the Pakistani

constitution” and “human rights”. Participants would also examine different forms of

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government, economic systems, citizenship education and approaches to advocacy. The

Citizenship Course Outline’s attention to Human Rights temperature in participants’

classrooms, the Pakistani constitution, Human Rights in the local context, civil society

associations in Pakistan, field visits and locally available guest speakers from the Pakistani

context all indicated concerted attention in this session of the course to the Pakistani context.

The language and strategies in the Course Proposal coupled critical reflection of the concept

of citizenship with opportunities for participants to apply what they had learnt -the Course

Proposal, for example, suggested that participants analyse the Constitution and use case

studies to examine practical examples of citizenship education in Pakistan, as well as

construct an approach to citizenship education to apply within their own contexts through

Action Plans. Advocacy was also identified as a key skill in the Course Proposal Objectives

as well as Citizenship section. The emerging approach, based on the focus of critical

reflection and practice, emphasised knowledge, skills and procedures essential for long term

critical democratic citizenship practice (critical skills, advocacy) combined with knowledge

and skills to clarify hidden meanings embedded in the formal curriculum.

Critical reflection clarifies hidden meanings implicit in what is taught. This, combined with a

language for understanding through practice, can provide critical democratic citizenship

opportunities for students. Engaging participants in critical reflection and practice within their

own contexts emerged as a key pedagogical strategy apparent in the Citizenship Course

Outline and in the Course Proposal. For example, this entailed identifying personal

preconceived notions about Citizenship Education, Human Rights and Conflict Resolution

Education by getting participants to reflect on what they knew and wanted to know about

these concepts. Also included was critical analysis of controversial issues such as human

rights practice in their own classrooms, or gaps between doctrine and implementation of the

Pakistani constitution, Pakistani identity, debt and globalization. Discussion of different

forms of democracy, systems of government, and economic systems and approaches to

citizenship education provided participants opportunities for critical reflection by introducing

them to contrasting points of view and thus examining different approaches to citizenship and

citizenship education. The Citizenship Outline also laid out a conflict-centred curriculum

within which citizenship was portrayed as a controversial and value-laden term. In the

Citizenship section then (as evidenced from Citizenship session documents) participants had

plenty of opportunity for critical reflection using discussion, dialogue and debate.

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The Citizenship section Course Outline also promised participants opportunities to

experience working examples of citizenship action, such as the Orangi Pilot Project. Field

visits were also designed to illuminate processes of learning. For example, the trip to GEO, a

24 hour news TV channel, followed a component on media literacy, and therefore could serve

to help participants deconstruct what they see in print.

A focus that was absent in the Citizenship section documents, however, was the confrontation

of barriers to citizenship for diverse groups. Affirmative measures that would enable access

to mechanisms for citizenship participation for diverse groups are a key component of

‘critical democratic citizenship.” The Citizenship section documents however did not propose

to examine differential access to mechanisms for citizenship among women and minority

groups in Pakistan. Although the Course Outline did propose to examine systemic economic

factors such as debt and globalization that may promote inequity, inequity based on gender,

race, religion, ethnicity that could inhibit access to citizenship participation was absent. The

Citizenship section documents also paid less attention to citizenship-relevant learning

opportunities through decision-making, disciplinary structures and diversity practices within

the implicit curriculum of the school. The section documents did identify the relationship of

disciplinary and decision-making structures to citizenship-learning: participants assessed the

human rights temperature of schools on the first day, the implicit citizenship curriculum was

discussed in the last day of the last week and teaching-learning strategies within the formal

curriculum that could enable students to learn skills for critical democratic citizenship were a

strong emphasis of the course.

Citizenship-relevant learning opportunities through decision-making, disciplinary structures

and diversity practices, however, were relegated a secondary status to learning citizenship

through the formal curriculum because bias awareness (prejudice, tolerance and acceptance)

and participatory disciplinary and decision making structures were discussed in a separate

section on Conflict Resolution. The separation of the Citizenship and Conflict Resolution

sections could make the connection of conflict resolution strategies to citizenship education

unclear to participants. Describing conflict resolution as teaching the “skills” for citizenship

within the Course Proposal presented communication-based skills in isolation of structures

for decision making, disciplinary approaches and diversity practices in the implicit

curriculum to enable students to learn and practice citizenship participation (this is discussed

further in the section on analyzed Conflict Resolution section documents). Course leaders

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may have intentionally omitted bias awareness from the curriculum of the Citizenship session

of the course (evident from Citizenship course documents). The absence of bias awareness

and the importance of the implicit curriculum in shaping citizenship opportunities limited the

critical democratic citizenship potential of the course by omitting how access to power on the

basis of social identity, due to systemic constraints that may be reproduced through the

implicit curriculum of the school, can restrict citizenship participation of certain groups.

The Citizenship section of the course, as evidenced from course documents, proposed to offer

participants opportunities for critical reflection and practice with a concerted emphasis on the

Pakistani context and thus presented an approach to a formal curriculum for citizenship

education that embodied components of critical democratic citizenship education. The

Citizenship section proposed to offer participants opportunities to learn and practice

components for critical democratic citizenship education within the formal curriculum. This

was by proposing strategies that would enable participants to deal with contrasting

viewpoints in an open classroom climate through discussion and debate; discuss controversial

issues such as contesting notions of citizenship, national identity as multi-faceted; analyze

values for citizenship embedded in the Pakistani Constitution; participate in the development

of a context-relevant framework of citizenship as well as grounding this learning in a

meaningful, working context by learning about citizen organizations via field visits and guest

speakers. These strategies relied on centralizing conflict in the classroom, which could

highlight hidden values that represented power structures governing dominant notions of

citizenship, as well as providing participants an opportunity to develop a context-relevant

notion of citizenship. The critical democratic citizenship potential of the approach to

citizenship education in the course, however, was limited by the absence of a discussion on

how differential access to citizenship opportunities could limit citizenship participation of

diverse groups in society, and how access to these opportunities could be regulated by

decision making, disciplinary and diversity practices in the school. Without considering

constitutional or structural mechanisms to support participation of disadvantaged groups in

society and school, participants could be led to strategize frameworks of citizenship that

emphasize liberal-democratic oriented goal of equality versus critical-democratic oriented

goal of equity.

The Conflict Resource section Documents did not provide participants with much room for

critical reflection, and focused primarily on the teaching of communication-based skills as

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conflict resolution. Language and content in the Conflict Resolution Spectrum reading, the

Conflict Resolution Course Outline and the Conflict Resolution Key Messages Handout (the

three readings on which I base my analysis of the Conflict Resolution session in this section

due to reasons discussed earlier) presented Conflict Resolution (therefore citizenship) through

specific communication-based knowledge/skills assumed to be “universally” applicable in

contrast to the more critical and Pakistan-focused approach in the Citizenship Education

section Documents and, to an extent, the Conflict Resolution Approaches Reading. The

Conflict Resolution Key Messages handout claimed that “most conflicts can be resolved” if

the right approach were used implying an assumption that complex social/structural issues

were not included within the proposed approach to conflict resolution (Conflict Resolution

Key Messages handout, p. 3). The Conflict Resolution Spectrum Reading specified

collaboration as the “most appropriate response” to conflict. The Conflict Resolution Key

Messages highlighted the possibility of “win-win” resolution, in which “all interests. . . by

both parties have been accounted for in the solutions created by the parties." The Conflict

Resolution Spectrum Reading introduced readers to a mnemonic device to “elicit information

about party’s interests if you are hoping to resolve conflicts collaboratively” (CHEAPBFV

for Concerns, Hopes, Expectations, Assumptions, Priorities, Beliefs, Fears and Values). It

identified key components of Conflict Resolution Education as the “nature of conflict, ways

of dealing with conflict, communication and conflict, emotion and conflict, problem solving

and conflict, power and conflict, anger management, prejudice, tolerance, acceptance. The

emphasis on conflict as interpersonal and conflict resolution as “skills” highlighted effective

communication that sought to resolve interpersonal conflict as citizenship practice. These

skills were therefore assumed to ‘generically’ applicable for all types of interpersonal

conflict. This focus did not address social conflicts where inequity could be the underlying

cause and thus conflict resolution as learning skills for equitable citizenship practice

Three out of five days in the Conflict Resolution section Course Outline were taken up by the

communication-based key components, whereas half of one day’s session was devoted to

prejudice, tolerance and acceptance, and half a day to power. The Conflict Resolution Section

Course Outline identified reflection questions scheduled for the end of the day, such as, “how

have my ideas about conflict changed today? What is one thing I am pondering about and

why? Are human beings equally prone to peace as they are to violence?” A Panel Discussion

of Peace Education Initiatives in Pakistan was proposed as the penultimate session. This was

followed by a “review of conflict resolution components: candidates’ choice, followed by

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“delivery of CRE workshops” by candidates by course participants. This shows that the

Conflict Resolution section Outline relegated less time and priority to critical reflection, bias

awareness and contextualization of conflict resolution education in the Pakistani context than

communication-based skills that occupied the most time in the course.

The Conflict Resolution section Course outline, and most of the Conflict Resolution

Readings, adopted a narrow prescriptive approach to Conflict Resolution Education, topics

and skills without providing an equal focus on critical reflection. Critical reflection and

practice are key components of critical democratic citizenship education, as discussed in

Chapter 2. Therefore, the absence of opportunities for critical reflection in the Conflict

Resolution section of the course restricted opportunities to practice critical democratic

citizenship. The language and content of the Outline relegated participant-centred approaches

as secondary to its prescriptive content-based approaches. Allotting the majority of the

workshop time to communication-based “key components” relegated the remaining content

covered in the course session to a secondary position.

The introductory and concluding sessions — the links to Conflict Resolution Education and

citizenship, human rights, prejudice, power and the Panel Discussion — appeared as marginal

‘introductions’ or ‘conclusions’, rather than as the crux of the session. They also appeared to

be somewhat disconnected from the individual communication skills components. In contrast,

the field visits and guest speaker were fully integrated in the Citizenship Education section of

the course. The Conflict Resolution section course assignments/projects listed in the Conflict

Resolution section Course Outline seemed to encourage replication of course components as

opposed to critically analyzing them. The Conflict Resolution Education section relied on

participants’ acceptance of skills as ‘universally crucial’ to Conflict Resolution without any

discussion on the applicability to the social context within which they would be applied.

Efforts to address the social context, such as the panel discussion or reflection questions,

were not linked to the ‘crux’ of the Conflict Resolution section of the course.

Citizenship and Conflict Resolution Course sections: Critical-Democratic and Liberal

Individualist Goals

There is little consensus on the skills, values and knowledge required for ‘good citizenship’ —

with the result that various programs that all claim to promote ‘citizenship education’ may be

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promoting very different notions of citizenship (Bickmore, 2001). The contrasting notions of

citizenship embedded in the Citizenship and Conflict Resolution sections of the IED

Citizenship course are important as they illustrate the contradictions that can be embedded in

citizenship practice.

In the sections above, I discussed how course documents in the Citizenship section of the

Citizenship Certificate Course helped course participants develop capacities for ‘critical

democratic citizenship’ as explained in the Literature Review. In essence, the Citizenship

section documents showed citizens to be embedded within a social context to be able to

collectively advocate needs, interests, and wishes with social justice as the goal. Course

leaders highlighted citizenship to be a value-laden by identifying different points of view of

citizenship and historical processes that helped shaped dominant notions of citizenship.

Citizenship action was presented as accessible to all individuals by virtue of everyday

processes (in home, school and community) that could be as “speakers of words and doers of

deeds acting collectively in the public realm” (Dietz, 1989, p. 14). This notion of citizenship,

where individuals are active democratic agents capable of influencing the democratic

structures that govern them was consistent with the knowledge, skills and values of critical

democratic citizenship proposed in Chapter 2. What the Citizenship section documents did

not explicitly address, (but could have implied by including different points of view about

citizenship) however, was the inequitable structures that provided differential access to

citizenship mechanisms for citizens from disadvantaged groups. The Course Proposal and

Course Reading of the Citizenship section of the course thus appeared to support the liberal-

democratic oriented assumption that disadvantaged groups had equal access to citizenship

mechanisms for citizens, by ignoring the need for structural/constitutional measures to enable

citizenship participation of these groups. It is possible that this aspect was not formally

outlined but could have been a running theme during the course. This omission, however,

limited the critical democratic citizenship potential of the presentation of citizenship in the

Citizenship Education section of the course.

Citizenship documents advocated a conflictual and contextualized approach to citizenship

education emphasizing critical reflection and practice, by encouraging participants to

critically analyse notions of citizenship in political and economic structures that governed

their everyday lives. The Citizenship Education section documents drew on course

participants’ experience to strategize approaches to citizenship appropriate to and grounded

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in a Pakistani context by utilizing teaching-learning approaches that relied on student

engagement (through dissenting viewpoints, debate, discussion) in the curricular processes.

Teaching-learning processes also drew on working examples of citizenship action in the

Pakistani context grounding citizenship education in a meaningful and possible context.

Citizenship section Course documents presented schools as sites where students could learn

and practice ‘critical democratic citizenship’, through facilitating students’ critical analysis of

social structures primarily within the formal curriculum, and practice of skills such as

advocacy and decision-making. The documents also identified but paid less attention to

citizenship-relevant learning opportunities through the implicit curriculum. The Citizenship

section Course documents limited attention to the role of the implicit curriculum in regulating

citizenship learning and bias awareness strategies that could highlight systemic barriers that

restricted the citizenship participant of socially disadvantaged groups inhibited the critical

democratic citizenship potential of the approach to citizenship education presented in the

Citizenship Education section of the course.

The focus of the Conflict Resolution section on individual-level communication-based skills,

and the absence of approaches to deal with social conflict that would enable equity-based

Conflict Resolution processes enacted a more limited and less critical approach to ‘critical

democratic citizenship.” The Conflict Resolution section of the course depicted

communication based skills as “key components” while sessions that encouraged critical

reflection were relegated to a secondary status. Here, the emergent goal of conflict in

relationship to citizenship, as apparent from extracts from the Conflict Resolution section

documents discussed above, was limited to improved communication to handle interpersonal

conflict for a non-violent school community.

A focus on individual communication skills would not be sufficient for a critical-democratic

school community, because this, as with liberal-democratic approaches to conflict

management, ignores the social cultural context that plays a key role in how conflict is

manifested and handled. Communication-based skills such as listening respectfully, analysing

alternative viewpoints and analysing problems and solutions are important for ‘critical-

democratic citizenship’. However, as discussed in Chapter 2, how conflict appears and is

dealt with in a society is a manifestation of social knowledge promoted through political,

economic, social structures and kinship patterns (Lederach 1995, Ross, 1995). The exclusive

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focus on communication-based skills for interpersonal conflict in the Conflict Resolution

section in the context of schools could mislead course participants into thinking that

communication skills alone are a factor in conflict resolution, rendering overall school and

school-system implicit curriculum and institutional structure as unimportant. The Conflict

Resolution section’s focus on individual communication skills in the Conflict Resolution

component without attending to conflict as a manifestation of social ‘culture’ and school

processes and how these provide differential access to students of diverse groups, could lead

course participants to simplify causes underlying conflicts. The Conflict Resolution sections

emphasis on teaching specific communication-based skills with limited opportunity for

critical reflection and practice of the values underlying these skills and their applicability in

the Pakistani context could also lead course participants to believe that there is only one

“good”, “Western” approach to teaching Conflict Resolution Education. Conflict Resolution

section documents, therefore, ignored the social and school ‘culture’ that can govern how

conflict manifested in school and society making the liberal-democratic assumption that

individuals in conflict are on a level playing field thus individual communication skills

sufficient to deal with conflict.

How conflict resolution strategies are implemented can play a key role in the citizenship

opportunities conflict resolution initiatives can offer students. Mediation and negotiation

initiatives covered in the Conflict Resolution section of the course could provide students

with opportunities for autonomous self-control if they were designed to ensure inclusion of

diverse groups, and if they were designed to ensure provided a chance to practice critical

reflection and power sharing (Bickmore, 2001, Hahn, 1998). The absence in this course

session of a critical examination of the larger school processes and social structures within

which Conflict Resolution processes are to be implemented could inadvertently reinforce

inequitable school structures. Addressing larger decision-making structures of the school and

the social context within which conflict resolution approaches are to be implemented in such

a course would be particularly important in relation to Pakistani schools where, especially in

the public sector, hierarchal decision making systems, corporal punishment and exam-

focused rote learning are often the norm (Saigol, 1993, Dean, 2003, Vazir, 2004). In a rigidly

hierarchal school system, negotiation and mediation initiatives may result in preserving

traditional adult-student roles and promoting non-disruptive student behaviour rather than

providing genuine opportunities for students to participate in the decision-making structures

that govern them (Bickmore, 2001). Strategies for conflict resolution covered in the Conflict

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Resolution section also primarily focused on the explicit teaching of specific communication-

based skills for citizenship without discussing how conflict resolution could be integrated in

the core curriculum. This focus could lead participants to believe that Conflict Resolution

Education was a co-curricular acitivity.

In the Conflict Resolution section, conflict resolution appeared as teaching individual

communication-based skills for citizenship. The understanding of citizenship embodied in

this approach to conflict learning was that students’/citizens could equally participate

assuming equal positions of power. In advocating a ‘generic’ approach to Conflict Resolution

Education through primarily prescriptive strategies that did not consider the Pakistani

context, skills and thus values underlying citizenship were assumed to be ‘universal’. The

focus on resolving interpersonal conflict implicitly promoted the absence of conflict or

dissenting behaviours, rather than integral to citizenship. This focus on individual

communication-based skills in the Conflict Resolution component promoted harmony or non-

disruption as a goal for citizenship — a relatively passive and undemocratic interpretation.

The most obvious possible reason for the contrasting approaches to citizenship apparent in

the Conflict and Citizenship Course section documents was the fact that the two sets of

sessions and documents were prepared and led by different people representing different

organizations. The CRRP team, as discussed in the Methodology section and in the beginning

of this chapter, prepared the Citizenship Education section and documents. The Conflict

Resolution section and documents, that were the predominant base for this analysis, was

prepared by the Canadian representative of CRRP and her organization, with limited help

from myself. As apparent from the Citizenship Course Outline, the Citizenship Education

section was spread out over two weeks, compared to the one week given to the Conflict

Resolution section. The shorter amount of time may have forced the Canadian representative

to rely on more prescriptive approaches. The fact that all but one of the Conflict documents

were developed independently (and outside the country) by the Canadian representative could

likely be a reason for the more general skills, as opposed to a social-local context focus.

The fact that different authorship may have resulted in contrasting notions of citizenship

among the two documents is reinforced by the fact that the Conflict Resolution Approaches

reading, which was prepared by myself, was more consistent with the notion of citizenship

apparent within the Citizenship Education section of the course.

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Similarities between the Citizenship section documents and the Conflict Resolution

Approaches reading again highlight how my involvement with the Citizenship Rights and

Responsibilities Pakistan project team may have biased my analysis, as discussed in the

Methodology chapter. The fact that I was part of the process of planning the Citizenship

component may have led me to develop that document in a way that was more consistent

with my own and the team’s framework of conflict and citizenship (education).

The importance of this document analysis, however exploratory, is that it does illustrate the

different implications of the goals and practical documents of two sessions of one citizenship

course. This shows that contradictory notions of citizenship can be embedded in any

complex, implemented citizenship practice. The contradictory notions of citizenship

embedded in this course are important, as they show how different authors/organizations may

promote very different notions of ‘citizenship’. This is significant as it shows that precepts of

citizenship within this (and other) training initiatives reflect how training/education initiatives

can bd value-laden. This illustrates the need for citizen educators to clarify what they mean

by ‘citizenship’ including the role of conflict by critically analysing cultural goals promoted

through implicit and explicit means of their own practice.

Except for the Conflict Resolution Key Messages document, the document that are the

subject of this document analysis did not include documents that were distributed to

participants during the remainder of the Citizenship Education course. Further, documents by

definition are background material; they don't tell us anything about actual practice or how

individuals think. The next chapter will pick up on this challenge by focusing on the words

and work of selected course participants, as presented in interviews and Action Plans, to

develop an understanding of participants’ conceptions of the roles of conflict and social

context. What this document analysis HAS shown is some indication of the leaders’

intentions for citizenship education: it has made visible the somewhat contradictory nature of

those intentions, in particular the different assumptions about social conflict and notions of

citizenship embodied in the Conflict Resolution section as compared to the remainder of the

Citizenship Education section of the face to face component of the Citizenship Education

certificate course.

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CHAPTER 5: INTERVIEW AND ACTION PLAN ANALYSIS

Preview:

In the previous chapter I examined the goals and perspectives evident in the Citizenship and

Conflict Resolution sections of the Citizenship Certificate course. In this chapter, I explore

understandings of conflict, conflict resolution education and citizenship emerging from

interviews and Action Plans of the 6 interviewees who were a few of the participants in the

Citizenship Course. This analysis draws upon the conceptual framework of the citizenship

paradigms and their implications for conflict management: authoritarianism, liberal-

democratic and critical-democratic paradigms. I highlight conditions necessary for the

possibility of an equity-oriented approach to conflict education as part of citizenship-relevant

learning in Pakistan.

Data Analysis

Participant data was obtained from interviews and Action Plans (see Appendix 2 for Action

Plan assignment sheet and Appendix 3 for interview guide). Interview questions asked

participants about ‘examples of conflict’, ‘strategies for conflict education’ and ‘the

relationship of conflict to citizenship.’

Participant Response Profiles

Table 1: Participant Profiles

Name _ | Region | Education Profession Citizenship-Relevant Work

Moham | Lahore, Masters degree Instructor in Govt. Interested in studying med Punjab Teacher Training cooperative learning

College Nargis Peshawar | Masters degree Teacher trainer at Collected conflict resolution

,» NWFP NGO that trains in training materials from abroad conflict resolution and adapted them to Pakistan

Javaid Karachi, | Masters degree Teacher at a Active in schools co-curricular

Sindh competitive private activities including teaching secondary school social skills, discipline and

service learning Alia Karachi, | Matric Teacher at primary School part of CRRP project.

Sindh Govt. school Iqbal Toba Masters degree Principal of Involved with Muslim-

Tek, community run Christian interfaith dialogue Punjab primary school

Mariam | Karachi, | Bachelors degree | Learning Coordinator | Working in low income area on Sindh at school run by large | fringe of an affluent area

NGO

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Sindh at school run by large | fringe of an affluent area

NGO

Summary of Participants’ Perspectives

Mohammed, a teacher trainer, and Alia’’, a primary school teacher, both worked in the

government sector and discussed authoritarianism within the government system as conflict.

They spent a lot of time talking about the unfair decision making by his boss. Alia admired

the way her head handled conflict among teachers, but mentioned authoritarian strategies of

other supervisors. Mohammed was more vocal about this believing that he couldn’t apply

conflict resolution with his superiors and therefore would implement it with his teachers in

his class, Alia discussed how that conflicts in school were easily resolved but it was the

conflicts with the system (sewer outside gate, hawkers outside gate, boys coming into girls

building at recess time, lack of a staff room) that were difficult to resolve. Both Mohammed

and Alia stressed the unequal distribution of resources in the government sector. Both

participants also sought to establish peaceable classrooms — Alia through social skills

development and Mohammed through establishing cooperative learning groups and framing

classroom rules with students. Both also believed that bureaucracy in the government system

was an impediment to conflict resolution

Iqbal, Javaid and Mariam emphasized systemic factors and their roles in manifestations of

conflict — Iqbal discussed systemic conflict such as discrimination against minorities in

society, Javaid discussed prejudice among students on the basis of sect, and Mariam the

discrimination against girls education by male members of their family. Javaid and Mariam

also discussed systemic factors in promoting indiscipline in the school such as exclusionary

school policy or the management of the school that led students to engage in vandalism as

they did not feel “any ownership” towards the school. Mariam, Javaid and Iqbal also

advocated inclusion of content to teach critical thinking for conflict resolution: Iqbal

advocated inclusion of the Gospel to supplement a baised curriculum, Javaid discussed

conflicts around the world and Mariam believed that history teaching needed to include

historical fact and different points of view. Javaid and Mariam also addressed systemic

factors in conflict resolution strategies — Mariam through a disciplinary committee that

'0 These are pseudonyms in order to protect research participants’ confidentiality

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sought to give students more ownership and Javaid through cooperative learning groups that

could help students alleviate sectarian prejudice.

Nargis was the only participant who discussed a ‘culture of aggression’ as a factor in how

conflict was manifested. She believed this was promoted through parenting practices, ethnic

affiliation, lack of formal training in conflict resolution and teacher decision-making and

disciplinary practices. Nargis stayed focused on formal training of conflict resolution for

teachers believing that this could help challenge this ‘culture of aggression.’

In discussing citizenship in the context of conflict, Javaid, Narigs and Mariam believed that

upholding citizenship rights led to a more tolerant society. Iqbal and Alia focused on

citizenship as providing moral values. Mohammed focused on citizenship as preserving

discipline. Mariam and Mohammed, as they were the only two participants that I probed on

this, differentiated between physical conflict and intellectual conflicts clarifying that the

absence of conflict in the context of citizenship did not mean the absence of intellectual

growth.

1) WHAT IS CONFLICT AND WHAT FACTORS AFFECT HOW IT IS

MANIFESTED?

In the following section, I examine how participants responses in interviews, and their

Actions Plans, shed light on my research questions guiding my study — how were conflict and

conflict resolution education conceptualized by Pakistani educators participating in the

Citizenship Certificate Course? I discuss this question by examining 1) how participants

understood conflict and citizenship based on their examples of conflict and strategies of

conflict resolution, responses to the question ‘what is the relationship of conflict to

citizenship’ and challenges to Pakistani citizenship education, based on participants’ Action

Plans and interview comments.

Conflict as Indiscipline

In response to the question ‘what are some examples of conflict’ most participants initially

equated conflict with student indiscipline. Alia, Nargis and Mohammed suggested that

indiscipline was based on lack of education. Alia, a primary government school teacher,

described indiscipline, or students running out of classrooms before hometime, as an example

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of conflict among students. She added that indiscipline “is also [caused by] the influence of

the area — it is not such an educated area —children are not getting anything — that you have to

stay so disciplined, you have to do this.” Here, Alia linked students’ indiscipline to the low

educational background of their families. Nargis, a trainer, also said that students’ fights over

possessions were rooted in a lack of education. However, she emphasized throughout her

interview that specified constructive dialogue-based conflict resolution could be formally

learnt. She proposed teacher training in communication-based strategies as the focus of her

Action Plan.

Mohammed, another teacher trainer, equated conflict with student indiscipline and believed

that students needed to learn conflict resolution formally in order to learn how to handle

conflicts constructively. However, he linked this directly to conflict’s relationship to

citizenship. He explained that if a teacher didn’t fulfill his/her responsibilities then there

would be conflict. For example, if a teacher didn’t plan her lessons, students would

misbehave. Mohammed also consistently advocated teaching of conflict resolution strategies

to students through role modelling for his students. This was reinforced in his Action Plan

where he proposed to adopt cooperative learning strategies to frame rules with students.

Mariam, an NGO educator, and Javaid, a private secondary school teacher, also primarily

described conflict as indiscipline. However, unlike those participants cited above who saw

this as due to lack of conflict resolution training, Mariam and Javaid believed indiscipline

was due to school processes that alienated students promoted student indiscipline. Javaid,

several times in his interview, asserted that authoritarian disciplinary measures or biased

decision-making structures promoted indiscipline or bias among students and teachers. Like

Alia and others who linked students’ or their families’ educational background to the way in

which they handled conflict, Javaid said his students didn’t get into physical conflict

(fighting) because they were high achievers who were serious about their studies. However,

Javaid also emphasized the role of implicit school processes in socializing students’ conflict

behaviour. He believed his students didn’t get into physical conflict (fighting) because they

were high achievers who were serious about their studies. However, Javaid also emphasized

the role of implicit school processes in socializing students’ conflict behaviour. He believed

his students didn’t get into physical conflict because his and the schools’ disciplinary

measures did not entail “put[ting] barbed wire around them,” and he employed more

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democratically-oriented strategies such as reasoning with his students.

Similar to Alia, Mariam, in her interview and Action Plan, discussed how male students from

a low -income community believed a “lack of ownership” in her school. She believed

students considered this school to be run by “rich ladies” and that this led to vandalism and

stealing by boys in the school. Javaid and Mariam focused on the role of school disciplinary

structures, implying that students learned conflict resolution not only from formally taught

strategies, but also through their involvement in school and classroom decision -making

structures. Therefore, for Mariam and Javaid here, conflict resolution education was

advocated not merely to teach students how to conform to social norms, but also as an

initiative toward equitable school structures. Mariam and Javaid may have focused, more

than other interviewees, on inequity in school processes as a cause of student indiscipline

because both worked in schools where school policy explicitly privileged one group of

students over the other. Javaid’s school was run by a religious group which he suggested

privileged students belonging to that religious group. Mariam’s school was focused on girls’

education, thus she believed boys there sometimes felt underprivileged.

The implication that conflict resolution was learnt through education and appeared more

accessible to students with social privilege implied that conflict resolution education,

interpreted as flexible disciplinary regimes by Javaid for example, was a form of education

that taught students how to conform to social norms. Javaid and Mariam may have been more

attentive to alienating school processes as a cause for student indiscipline because of

discriminatory policies in their own school, which could suggest that participants who have

experiences/witnessed systemic conflict would be more prone to identify it.

2. Conflict As Exclusion

Iqbal, a primary school principal, Alia, a primary school teacher, Mariam, an NGO educator,

and Javaid, described conflict as exclusion but, except for Javaid, did not discuss this in direct

response to the question ‘what are some examples of conflict.’ These participants suggested

that student exclusion was promoted systemically. Javaid, for example, discussed how

students grouped themselves on a sectarian basis and refused to associate with students from

other groups. He discussed how his students refused to take certain internships where they

would have to be with students who were not from their sectarian group. Javaid believed this

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bias-based exclusion might be due to prejudice in society as well as school policy:

“TI don’t know where it comes from but by the time they come to school they sort themselves

out in groups.”

Javaid implied that students’ prejudices were formed prior to coming to school. However, he

also linked students’ prejudices to policy issues in the school, which he couldn’t describe

specifically because of confidentiality issues. Javaid, therefore, consistently acknowledged

the role of school processes, such as exclusionary decision making structures and

authoritarian disciplinary measures, as factors that aggravate bias and promote violent

conflict.

Mariam, an NGO volunteer, mentioned exclusion of peers was a more common approach to

conflict among girls, possibly based on how girls were socialized: “Girls are more likely to

tease peers who come from underprivileged backgrounds or who are low achievers or get into

conflict with a younger sibling who they have to bring to school.” Mariam’s example

suggested that overt destructive conflict, such as misbehaviour was primarily linked to

conflict among boys in the school while girls’ were socialized to be responsible (e.g. having

to take care of younger siblings) leading them to engage in more covert forms of conflict.

Iqbal discussed his own experience of exclusion, on the basis of being the only Christian

student in a Muslim school he was the right denied to drink water from the water cooler and

addressed by his religion and not his name by other students and teachers. Iqbal linked his

personal experiences of exclusion to his understanding of systemic inequity especially the

suppression of disadvantaged groups by groups that have power.

Alia gave two examples of conflicts in which other students excluded a peer — in one such

incident Alia found out that a girl who kept crying in class was doing so because she was

jilted by her friend whose mother did not want her to associate this jilted girl. Alia described

how she handled such conflicts by positively looking at the situation in context — asking

teachers, the monitor and other students about what the problem with the girl may be and

personally talking with the girl.

These participants possibly did not consider students’ exclusion of peers to be as prominent

kind of conflict behaviour as student indiscipline because they did not spend much talking

about it. Mariam’s point above, about girls’ exclusion behaviour suggested another

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possibility: that exclusion is often covert versus and thus less visible than overt vandalism,

and stealing, or other misbehaviour. Thus, although exclusion may be a prominent type of

student conflict behaviour, these participants focused more on overt student conflict such as

(mis)behaviour and challenge to established school rules.

Thus, in summary, all 6 participants’ primarily understood conflict as overt manifestations of

student misbehaviour. They linked this indiscipline to lack of education more than to

exclusionary disciplinary measures in the school. Only Javaid offered exclusion as an

example of conflict, (Alia and Iqbal raised concerns about exclusion at other points in their

interview), suggesting that exclusion was not considered to be conflict as readily as was

indiscipline. These participants believed exclusion to be linked to systemic factors

(discriminatory school policy, gender socialization, suppression of disadvantaged groups,

classism). All interviewees suggested that access to education could lead to the adoption of

better-disciplined behaviours. Conflict resolution processes thus emerged primarily as

education to teach students to conform to social norms. Such teaching would tend to reinforce

power structures in school rather than challenging them.

Some Teachers’ Unjust use of Power

Mariam, Iqbal, Nargis and Javaid identified social inequity as a kind of conflict manifested in

some individual teachers’ unjust use of power. They highlighted teachers’ use of power, such

as bias or corporal punishment, as reinforcers of systemic inequity such as classism. Mariam,

for example, believed that teachers in her community school harboured implicit class bias:

“This approach is visible when [the teachers] are teaching [the students], the way that they

talk to them — they’re very nice to them, but yet it’s like a relationship of a little superiority. . . like ‘[the students are] not clean’. [The teachers’] approach is because they come from this locality they’re not clean, its not that they don’t know any better.”

Teacher bias described by Iqbal, the principal of a Christian school, was more explicit. He

referred to it as "mental punishment”, for example, as teachers saying to students:

“°Your whole family is incompetent. You can’t be educated’. . .the teachers are from that sort of background and the parents are mostly from the same kind of background. The teachers

know the family’s situations and they treat them on that basis.”

Iqbal, like Mariam, described teachers’ discriminatory judgements about students on the basis

of their socially underprivileged status as a kind of conflict. Nargis, believed teachers’

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favouritism towards high achievers biased their student-related decisions.

Javaid was the only participant who discussed systemic reinforcement of teacher bias, rather

than only individual teacher bias. He argued for example that the greater power of the

commerce faculty in his school, through their increased involvement in school co-curricular

activities, had led to bias in favour of commerce versus science students when disciplinary

problems arose:

“Mainly the commerce teachers on our campus are. . .more professionally oriented personalities. .. They are mainly male academic faculty that can get involved in many

activities. Like. . they have more power and when a disciplinary issue comes on [their]

shoulders, [they might pardon] commerce students . . .because they have to go and teach them in the classroom and try not to bring a communication gap between the students.

Javaid identified the causes of this power imbalance as sexism and social class privilege

reproduced through the school disciplinary committee. Javaid therefore, agrees with the

other participants, that teacher bias is a manifestation of an equity conflict.

Alia, at first, said that conflicts between teacher and students didn’t really happen in her

primary school, and that if they did then they happened “personally” and thus were not

visible. However, she went on to say that visible teacher-student conflicts were issues of

students not respecting teachers’ authority:

“Tf a girl disturbs a class then and [doesn’t] obey and [she is] specially mentioned to [us by

the teacher or] if we hear [about] it personally we go in the class talk to the girl make her

aware of her mistake, and then the girl says sorry. . .we don’t think there is that much. . .its

medium.”

Alia’s statement shows that she believed students’ challenge to teacher authority was the

most visible form of teacher-student conflict, and that such conflicts were resolved by the

intervention of an authority figure. Mohammed described links between student-teacher

conflict and teacher-teacher conflict. Some teachers kept missing classes, and students took

this complaint up to the ‘dominating group’ of teachers. Mohammed said this became

teacher-teacher conflict if the teacher who was approached by this group of colleagues took it

personally.

Iqbal, Javaid, Nargis and Mariam’s recognition of social inequities such as individual teacher

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bias and discrimination, and their identification of decision making and disciplinary

structures, showed that they considered the implicit as well as the formal curriculum in their

understandings of conflicts in schools. However, these four interviewees tended to focus on

isolated symptoms of inequity among individuals. For example, they described individual

teachers bias, rather than class stratification or patriarchy manifested systemically through

school processes. This generally liberal-democratic orientation may have contributed to

participants’ focus on the importance of formal communication-based training in conflict

resolution for teachers (see below).

Discrimination on a Societal Level

Iqbal, Mariam and Nargis offered examples of discrimination as examples of conflict. Iqbal,

the principal of a community-run school, discussed discrimination against Christians. For

example, he described discrimination against a Christian driver who was not granted a job

because of his religion. Mariam also spent most of her interview talking about the

“ideological conflict” between the girls who wanted to pursue or continue their education,

and their fathers or brothers who were opposed to the female pursuit of education. She said

this conflict was common in the community surrounding her school:

“[Male members of the community] fear that once a girl leaves the home she is susceptible to

all kinds of influences they were fearing within their communities that would be difficult to

handle. . . so I think [male family members resistance to female members attending school] is social values more than anything else because [the male members] have nothing against

education per se and more what they feel education would lead [the girls] to do.”

Mariam’s statement shows that she considers male resistance to girls attending school as

important conflict. Mariam and Iqbal, focused on the symptoms of inequity manifested at an

individual level, such as denial of jobs to Christians or conflict between girls and fathers over

schooling, rather than systemic inequity.

Taking a broader level of analysis than Mariam and Iqbal, Nargis described existing conflict

resolution processes in Pakistani society as inequitable. Nargis worked as teacher trainer in

Conflict Resolution, and advocated formal training in conflict resolution throughout her

interview. She believed destructive conflict resolution processes were learnt from home,

where “from day one we are taught to fight back to get our rights.” This, she believed, led to

win-lose solutions that reflected the will of the strong over the weak, which in turn bred a

‘culture of aggression’ in Pakistan. Nargis believed that countries that adopted non-violent

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conflict resolution approaches were USA, Britain, Europe and Canada and that these less

violent culture were due to their formal training in conflict. She believed that formal training

could enable conflict resolution strategies such as mediation to be practiced correctly in

Pakistan:

“ We are mediating but we don’t know what the role of the mediator is. So at times we are making judgements on either parties but through this course we came to know that the mediators’ role is not to give yuadgements but just to facilitate.”

Nargis emphasized that existing conflict resolution processes reproduced inequity rather than

ensuring equitable distribution of power Thus, Nargis, Javaid and Mariam’s examples of

conflicts in society regarded distribution of power to be a defining principle of conflict. At

the same time, Nargis here and throughout her interview recommended an emphasis on

communication-skills development for individuals: she viewed that as sufficient to address

imbalances of power among disputants as Nargis attributed her understanding of the practice

of mediation to the Citizenship Certificate Course.

Iqbal, Mariam and Nargis’s examples of inequitable power structures in society showed that

they understood conflict was not only an individual phenomenon but also a social

phenomenon. Mariam and Iqbal focused on the manifestation of systemic inequity

(discrimination, resistance of girls) on an individual level as conflict rather than systemic

inequity (suppression of minority groups, patriarchy) as conflict. This illustrated participants’

focus on the individual manifestation of systemic conflict rather than systemic conflict itself.

Nargis’s suggested the need for equitable conflict resolution processes based on her emphasis

on inequity within conflict resolution processes. These findings were significant as they

showed that although participants may have led recognized individual and systemic level

conflict, they consciously focused on the former.

HOW SHOULD BE CONFLICT BE TAUGHT AND PRACTISED?

Focus on Individual Skills Development

Alia and Javaid suggested strategies focused on Conflict Resolution Education for individual

conflict resolution skills development, which they believed to have the potential to challenge

social conflicts. Primary teacher Alia, for example, advocated that by teaching her female

students to be more assertive by guiding and encouraging them “speak, discuss their inner

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thoughts. . discuss their approaches outside,” through activities such as debate. She believed

this would help them acquire teaching jobs in private schools, and (she joked), to learn to

speak up in front of their in laws. Alia thus believed that developing girls’ ability to express

themselves could address low self confidence in girls and enable them to be more assertive to

meet their needs. Alia’s implicit implication is that government schoolgirls’ silence is due to

patriarchy and classism and that teaching girls to be assertive could help to address these

inequities.

Secondary teacher Javaid advocated skills-based cooperative learning groups as a way to

address the sectarian grouping of students in his school. He believed that getting students to

interview each other, and grouping students based on skills, would enable them to

communicate across ideological differences on the basis of “being required to come together

based on their skills and not on their beliefs and values.” Javaid’s statement reflects his belief

that communication and regrouping (changing curricular task structures) would help to

overcome social status competition and bias underlying prejudice.

Teacher educator Mohammed also suggested that developing individual students’

communication skills through role-modeling negotiation by framing classroom rules

collaboratively could help them to change power imbalances underlying hierarchal decision-

making structures. Mohammed’s proposed, in his interview and Action Plan, to model and

practice conflict resolution in the class, one means of which was to invite students to develop

classroom rules collaboratively, with the teachers he was training. Mohammed stated that by

teaching conflict resolution to his teachers, who would go on to occupy government school

teaching positions, he believed he could integrate conflict resolution methods within

bureaucratic decision making structures through an “evolutionary versus revolutionary

process.”

Iqbal and Mariam believed involving students in decision-making through student mediation

could be a strategy that could resolve interpersonal conflicts among students from escalating

into fights. According to Mariam:

“For example if you have two children, one could a Christian and one could be a Muslim child and they both have a fight over a ball or something, it doesn’t have to be a big thing. That little conflict could lead to religious conflict between the two families — a small thing. We could have other children [resolve the ball conflict] and say that ‘conflict can be resolved

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within ourselves and we don’t have to involve elders.”

Mariam’s seems to assume here that prejudice is restricted to attitudes of individual adults,

rather than also embedded in systemic inequity reproduced in the decision making and

disciplinary structures in schools and society that privilege dominant groups and subjugate

others. Mariam and Iqbal opted to bypass direct confrontation of prejudice by suggesting peer

mediation could deal with conflict concerning friction between Christian and Muslim

students.

Although all participants except Alia described teacher bias as a type of conflict, only one

participant actually went on to recommend strategies to address teacher bias. Nargis, a

teacher trainer, stressed the need for formal training in conflict resolution throughout her

interview to address teacher bias. She specified, however, that teachers would need to learn

good communication, which involved being “an active listener, and you have to be a good

speaker, you have to shun your biases and prejudices.” Nargis’ consistent assumption seemed

to be that teacher bias was the problem of an individual teacher and that appropriate

communication-based skills development could help overcome them

The strategies interviewees proposed for dealing with systemic inequity (patriarchy, classism,

sectarianism, religious discrimination) usually seemed to assume that student disputants and

that were on equal status levels and that communication-based strategies would be adequate

to deal with them. The goals named for their suggested conflict resolution strategies by each

participant reflected the redress of systemic inequity, while the conflict resolution education

strategies they advocated relied on communication-based approaches to address this inequity.

Strategies Valuing Student Involvement But Emphasis On Student Discipline

All 6 interviewees - Mariam, Nargis, Mohammed, Iqbal, Alia and Javaid - suggested

procedures for addressing student-student and student-teacher conflict, focused on providing

students opportunities to learn positive approaches to conflict resolution rather than relying

on punishment in student-student conflicts, or cases of indiscipline. All participants suggested

that conflict resolution reflected valuing student involvement in decision- making rather than

relying on an authority. However, throughout most of the interviews, the end goal of student

participation in decision-making structures appeared to be maintaining student discipline.

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Teacher trainer Nargis, primary teacher Alia, NGO volunteer Mariam and primary school

principal Iqbal suggested procedures for conflict resolution that provided students decision-

making power were classroom committees (Nargis) elections of student monitors (Alia),

student disciplinary programs (Mariam) and student mediation (Nargis and Iqbal).

Alia described her practice of organizing student elections to enable students to pick their

own monitors as an opportunity for students to “learn the ability to make choices.” However,

these student representatives, once elected, would serve as rule enforcers rather than rule

makers. Mohammed’s proposed collaborative rule-framing activity described above sought to

involve students in decision-making processes as well as to maintain a version of punitive

disciplinary approaches :

“In classroom management we have rules. . . framed by me and students in consultation, and

we follow the rules simply. . .If [students have formed the rule that] you can ask questions anytime, but it’s my rule that if you don’t ask me questions after I taught you something. . .and [then] if I ask you a question about that content and if you don’t tell me the answer you

can be punished.”

This shows that although Mohammed believes that students could learn negotiation through

negotiating rules, he also relied on punishment to support classroom control thereby

implicitly also teaching passive/obedient responses to conflict.

Mariam suggested the establishment of a student disciplinary committee in which students

would be able to create rules as well as implement them. These students, too, would be

elected. She proposed to have this discipline committee overseen by Islamiat and Social

Studies [patron] teachers who would facilitate rule framing and regulations, “but largely

children will have to take decisions on their own”. A student engaging in “anti social activity

would be answerable to his/her peers along with the schoo! authorities.” Mariam’s rationale

for establishing a student disciplinary committee was to address vandalism and stealing by

empowering students. She believed that by providing students a role in decision-making

structures, they would view themselves as “agents of change.” Mariam’s school-wide student

disciplinary committee gave students power to frame rules on a school level, albeit with the

guidance of a teacher, thus providing students guaranteed participation in decision making

structures. At the same time, Mariam also proposed that delinquent students would be

answerable to this committee as well as school authorities, which implied that this student

body would have limited decision making power.

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Teacher trainer Nargis and primary school principal Iqbal suggested student mediation, rather

than student disciplinarians, and proposed teaching students pro-active skills for dealing with

conflict resolution. Nargis described teacher-selected classroom committees to “[pick]

children. . .who could handle these discussions and dialogues within these classrooms

because there are just small issues. . .you took my pencil, I took your book, they become

physical” which she believed could contribute in establishing a “culture of dialogue and

discussion.” When I asked Nargis whether teacher-selected committees could only benefit

students who were high achieving and teacher’s pets. Narigs suggested that students could be

elected or “it would even be better [for the teacher] to pick a child who is mostly in conflict

things so he would realize that ‘now I have a different role to perform so I really have to

check myself.’” Nargis therefore suggested student mediators, who were selected by teachers

— possibly comprising both “good” and “bad” students - who would try to handle

interpersonal student-student conflict in a non-violent manner.

Mariam, Iqbal, Nargis and Javaid, who had suggested teacher bias and authoritarianism

primarily as teacher-student conflict, suggested strategies addressing teacher-student conflict

that entailed teachers adopting flexible authoritarian disciplinary approaches in which

authorities elicited student points of view establishing rules. Alia, Nargis and Mohammed

suggested consultative decision-making as examples of positive conflict resolution and

strategies for conflict resolution education strategies. Participants tended to emphasize this

point several times in their interviews. Primary teacher Alia, for example, said that : “[before

making a decision] everyday behaviour [of the student] should be observed, the class teacher

should be asked, the monitor should be asked. . the situation should be looked at within that

context”. She spoke highly of the head of her school who, she said, attended to teachers’

needs before making a decision. Alia thus stressed the importance of informed decision-

making on the part of authority figures. Perhaps because she worked at a primary school,

Alia’s approach (as with other participants who discussed consultative decision making as a

strategy) advocated that, rather than providing students opportunities to learn critical thinking

and decision-making skills to deal with conflict constructively themselves, suggested that

authorities should control governing decision making structures, albeit justly. Consultative

decision-making, however, might or might not sanction narrow regulation of student

behaviour emphasizing obedience rather than critical thinking, thus restricting students’

ability to learn skills for conflict resolution and thus critical democratic citizenship.

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Javaid, also advocated a flexible discipline regime stating that it was important to reason and

communicate with students rather than telling them what to do. Although he believed this

flexibility was important, Javaid also discussed how harsh disciplinary measures were in

place if required: “Our students are high achievers they don’t get into physical conflict. The

discipline guy we had, was trained in [a military school] and a former military cadet, he just

has to come out and look around students would be involved in their studies.” Although

Javaid, at several times in his interview emphasized the need to reason with students as

opposed to exert power authoritatively, his statement, as well as his personal involvement as

a member of the disciplinary committee, reflects his view that authoritative (or even punitive)

discipline infrastructure is also needed in the school to deal with delinquent students who

aren’t high achievers and thus may be prone to physical violence.

Nargis, Mariam and Mohammed discussed approaches used by teachers to elicit student

participation in decision-making that largely relied on negotiation. They believed that

teachers could be taught to elicit student participation in decision-making structures through

teacher training, or role modelling. Teacher trainer Nargis, for example, believed that

teachers should be trained to “listen to both sides of the story” and consult students in how to

handle conflict situations.

Primary school principal Iqbal’s example of positive conflict resolution as decision making

by an authority in contrast to other participants, resembled mediation. The role of the

authority figure here would be to facilitate rather than make a decision. He described, for

example, an incident where a teacher had badly beat up a student for refusing to follow

instructions, which became a “really serious matter” when the boys parents brought in

“reporters, influential people and elders.” Iqbal said, “we resolved the conflict by using

committee people, teachers, students, and then I talked to the . . .boy who was beaten up.”

Iqbal’s statement implies that the role of authority was to facilitate a dialogue between

disputing parties, and changing the role of the authority figure as ultimate decision maker to

facilitator of dialogue among disputing parties.

Teacher trainer Mohammed believed that teachers could teach conflict resolution by role

modeling it to students. However, as discussed earlier, after framing rules cooperatively with

students, the teacher could rely on punishment to enforce them. The reliance on punishment

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to enforce rules again emphasized adherence to authority over student self-autonomy.

Participants’ strategies to deal with student-student and teacher-student conflict emphasized

on valuing students involvement in decision making through establishing procedures for

student decision making or eliciting student input decision-making. Both ways, the ultimate

decision making authority lay with the teacher.

Inclusion of Content to Promote Critical Thinking Content in Teaching-Learning

Strategies

All participants advocated inclusion of pedagogues that could promote critical thinking as

conflict resolution affirming the importance of critical thinking to conflict resolution

education. They emphasized inclusion of content (in addition to the textbook) that taught

conflict resolution skills and strategies, encouraged different viewpoints in the classroom

(Mohammed), included different viewpoints in the teaching of history/civics (Mariam and

Iqbal) and enabled students to discuss their own conflicts through controversial issues

(Javaid). All but Javaid proposed this inclusion in the core curriculum. These activities

promised varying degrees of opportunities for critical thinking to students.

Teacher trainer Mohammed equated critical thinking with dissent in the classroom. He

discussed how when presenting his students with a definition in his class he encouraged them

to find alternate definitions on their own and if the student presented a strong argument he

would accept the alternate definition although he said “this doesn’t usually happen.”

Mohammed’s example shows his efforts to establish an ‘open’ classroom climate in his adult

teacher education class, but also suggests that it was not easy to get students to disagree with

him. Mohammed’s understanding of the teacher as authority that relies on punishment and

can do as they wished in the classroom, discussed earlier, suggests that Mohammed may not

have been able to provide an atmosphere where students would feel comfortable disagreeing

with their teacher. Mohammed’s emphasis, in his efforts to establish an open classroom

climate, is on the basis of a teacher-student relationship rather than encouraging different

points of view among students.

Primary school principal Iqbal, was the only participant that explicitly advocated confronting

bias in the curriculum and thus individual as well as social conflict in conflict resolution

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strategies: he discussed how he supplemented the Social Studies curriculum that excluded

minority groups (equating Pakistani citizenship with being Muslim). Iqbal said he

supplemented this curriculum with verses from the Christian Gospel, such as one that says

“you are the salt of the Earth. . and you are capable of government.” He explained to

students:

“You have to keep working for our nation, then one day there will be a change. Change

doesn’t mean that for religious minorities. . but there will be a change. You need to bring changes in your attitude, your thinking, you have to be loyal. You have to be a good contributor.”

Iqbal’s curriculum supplementation draws on religious sources to challenge an exclusionary

notion of citizenship in textbooks by choosing to focus on messages of equality, and by

emphasizing loyalty and obedience to his students, rather than directly critically analysing the

values represented in the textbooks. NGO volunteer Mariam believed students should be

provided with historical facts so they could question the glorification in textbooks, for

example, of the Kashmir war. Mariam’s suggestions were to reorient a biased curriculum by

providing different points of view. If systematically implemented in teaching practice, this

type of strategy could provide students with opportunities to critically analyse dominant

knowledge and thus to learn and practice skills important for critical democratic citizenship

education.

Javaid focused on conflicts around the world within a course that was focused on teaching

Geography and History around the world. He believed could thereby lead students to also

become capable to discuss their own conflicts. This, he believed, would be more effective

than telling students:

“You people get into conflict with one another and this is what happens. . .[rather leaming about conflicts around the world would give] [students] an idea as a whole: ‘ this is the conflict, these are the types, these are the causes, conflicts between two nations, two cultures,

between two schools of thoughts.”

Javaid suggested that controversial issues, or the discussion of conflicts around the world,

could lead students to understand their own conflicts. Javaid’s integration of conflict

resolution at the co-curricular level gave the inclusion of controversial issues less importance

than teaching methods for academic subjects.

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Primary school teacher Alia’s Action Plan proposed a new four-week component, at the start

of the school year, developing students’ social skills through a peacable classroom. She

emphasized the teacher’s development of a friendly atmosphere in the class by talking to

students kindly, asking questions emphasizing reflection (such as ‘what did you like most

about what we did today?’) and encouraging activities such as debate to teach students to

express themselves. Alia’s Peacable Classroom component focused on the development of

students’ social skills as well as ability to effectively deal with different points of view

through debate.

Participants’ strategies focused more on an inclusion of content for critical thinking rather

than an emphasis on development of critical thinking skills in teaching-learning strategies.

Although Mohammed attempted to establish an open classroom climate, his characterization

of dissent as student coming with an alternative definition to his (rather than dissent as

encouraging different points of view in his classroom) emphasized teaching content rather

than skills for conflict resolution. However, given that Pakistani classrooms are characterized

more often by a ‘closed’ climate — students working quietly (see Chapter 2) - Mohammed’s

efforts to seek an ‘open climate’ could be a drastic shift from prevalent classroom structures.

Iqbal’s emphasis on loyalty and Alia’s on kindness suggested that these participants

emphasized moral values at least as much as skills for conflict resolution or citizenship.

Communication Strategies Effective in Equal Status Conflicts

Javaid, Mohammed and Alia recognized that equal status disputes were easier to resolve than

systemic conflicts. In recognizing that power imbalance would make conflicts more complex

to resolve, they implied the need for different strategies to deal with conflicts that were

manifestations of inequity.

These three participants represented these teacher-teacher conflicts as interpersonal and

destructive, and as something that needed to be eliminated or avoided. Examples of teacher-

teacher conflicts included disputes over distribution of workload, involving colleagues seen

as having too much idle time and not valuing the organization (Javaid). Private secondary

school teacher Javaid believed he could avoid conflicts with colleagues who were not

interested in working for the betterment of the organization by not talking to those

individuals. Teacher trainer Mohammed, in a large part of his interview, expressed great

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frustration about conflicts with the management of his teacher-training institute. He said that

conflicts among colleagues were “resolved automatically” because all are “equal” and that

these disputes were of “less intensity than with [conflicts between teachers and the]

management.”

Primary school teacher Alia, like Mohammed, believed that systemic conflicts (in her case

gender bias) were harder to resolve than simpler, personal disputes:

.. if female [teachers] ever come into conflict with male [teachers] and they think like you

could have told them even one sentence and there could be something else in your mind but

they take it on their own mental level take it in a different way and make it a problem of ego . . -because of that there can be quite a few problems like ‘see we are not taken care of.’ Like people take it in a political way.

Mohammed, Javaid and Alia implied that conflict could be a power struggle, and that

communication-based conflict resolution strategies could be effective for handling

interpersonal conflicts among disputants of equal status. Alia and Mohammed’s recognized

that such conflict resolution strategies were relatively ineffective in social and equity based

conflicts. Mohammed described the rude behaviour of his boss, who did not provide him the

resources he needed, sent him on personal errands, but did not give him leave to see his sick

father. Mohammed believed that his boss’s behaviour was due to the authoritarian systems in

the government sector. Nargis, Mariam and Iqbal didn’t discuss conflicts with teachers or

authority, possibly because they did not work in the government system or, for Nargis,

because” I never worked under anyone.”

Alia described bureaucracy as manifest in male supervisors with political agendas and ego

issues, and who “take out work in whatever way possible and then leave. . .so that is their

handling.” Alia also discussed equal distribution of resources in the system, implying this

was based on favour rather than merit:

“the government. . should fulfil these responsibilities [like providing the school with a staff

room] but they don’t although its not like they cant do it because the things that we need are

present in other places but to pick them up and put them is a problem.”

Alia and Mohammed’s statements imply that conflicts with superior where systemic conflicts

that were harder to resolve than those on an individual level , and that communication based

interpersonal strategies were ineffective in such cases.

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Javaid, who worked in a competitive well-resourced private school, was the only participant

who gave as an example of conflict as constructive criticism of his superior. Javaid believed

his boss was interested in the betterment of the organization. The less bureaucratic decision-

making structures in the private school system where he worked may have led Javaid to view

this conflict as constructive. Alia and Mohammed, in contrast, suggested that systemic

conflicts involving superiors could not be solved through conflict resolution as they knew it.

Alia, Mohammed and Javaid’s discussion of teacher-teacher and teacher-supervisor conflict

implied that participants (like Alia and Mohammed) working in authoritarian system were

more likely to recognize that individual communication-based strategies were not effective in

conflicts where disputants had unequal roles (authority-subordinate). Javaid, who was

working in the private sector (thus no bureaucracy rooted in authoritarianism), was more

likely to discuss constructive conflict with authority. This implied that participants' context

influenced their perception of conflict management. Alia, Nargis, Javaid, Mohammed and

Mariam understood conflict resolution as learnt implying that access to knowledge was

indicative of social privilege (their idea that those with education have greater skills for non-

violent handling of conflict), as discussed earlier. They tended to view students who had

greater access to power, (on the basis of being high achievers or coming from educated

families), as having more knowledge and skills for handling conflict non-violently. Students

with greater access to power, such as those within Javaid’s comparatively well-resourced

school, were also spared punitive discipline policies. This link between access to dialogue

oriented conflict resolution approaches and systemic privilege was also evident from Alia’s

and Mohammed’s descriptions of authoritarianism as manifestations of bureaucratic

structure. In contrast, Javaid, who worked in a well-resourced private school, described

conflict with an authority figure as constructive conflict that he could handle on an

interpersonal level. These participants’ responses showed that an emphasis on dialogue-

oriented conflict ‘resolution’ did not address systemic inequities through social and school

processes and possibly reinforced them.

Analysis of Participants’ Views of Conflict and Conflict Strategies

Participants understandings of conflict, based on their examples showed that they offered

examples of systemic conflict such as discrimination, authoritarianism and bias, although less

so in relation to student-student conflict and more in relation to teacher-student and teacher-

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administrator conflict. Implying that mequitable power structures played a role in conflict and

conflict resolution, these participants manifested an understanding of conflict as both

interpersonal and a manifestation of social inequities. Similarly, Alia and Mohammed, who

worked within an authoritarian system, showed their understanding of aspects of conflict by

recognizing disputants’ differential access to power defined by authority and subordinate

roles (teacher-student, teacher-superior). These participants’ recognized that conflict

situations where participants were on an equal level were easier to resolve. This implied that

these participants were aware, possibly due to working an authoritarian context, that conflict

resolution strategies focused on interpersonal conflict were insufficient to handle social

conflicts with underlying power imbalances. However, systemic conflict based on social

inequity due to social location (racism, patriarchy) in ostensibly equal-status interactions—

student-student, teacher-teacher — were not mentioned in these interviews. Javaid and

Mariam, because of biased school policies in their own school, were the only two participants

to recognize the role of school processes in aggravating discipline conflicts among students.

Overlooking social identity and its implications by ignoring systemic conflict in society and

schools — institutionalized practices that can adversely affect students and especially

disadvantaged students’ behaviour can assume that students’ actions in school (or a citizens

actions in society) are governed by unfettered individual choice. Nargis, Alia, Mariam,

Mohammed, Iqbal and Javaid’s assumption that student conflict primarily arose from student

behaviour that was linked to their level of education assumed the equal access of education to

all groups, thus negative conflict behaviours were assumed to arise from individual choice. In

schools, this could perpetuate the impression that no one is to blame for students’ violence,

indiscipline or failure except the student themselves (Epp, 1996). In contrast, Epp suggests

that institutionalized school practices often positively reinforce dominance of students from

dominant group adversely effecting disadvantaged students. Schooling can therefore result in

different experiences for students from disadvantaged groups. Curriculum that upholds

dominant knowledge devalues the heritage of excluded groups; boys may be socialized to be

aggressive and think critically while girls and minorities to be passive and civilized (Epp,

1996, Gordan, Holland and Lahelma, 2000) Participants suggested conflict educational

strategies would therefore promote a ‘type’ of citizen or conflict management. Factors

contributing to reduction in school violence are linked to positive teacher-student

relationships and good quality instruction for all students (Gladden, 2000). The role of social

identity (race, gender, ethnicity etc.) and systemic school practices can play a key role in how

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conflict is manifested in schools. These participants’ suggested conflict strategies, in ignoring

how school processes govern inequitable power structures, could restrict disadvantaged

students from participating in communication oriented conflict strategies such as peer

mediation, for example, that assume equal status among disputants.

Participant suggested strategies for conflict resolution education, especially in relation to

student matters of indiscipline, that appeared to reinforce adult control. However, they

affirmed a flexible and consultative -discipline approach. Their emphasis on student

participation in disciplinary structures — such as Mariam’s suggested student disciplinary

committee, Alia’s student monitors, or Mohammed’s cooperatively framed classroom rules,

involved students in how rules would be framed and/or implemented. However, these

participants reflected fairly minimal emphasis on teaching students’ positive education for

conflict resolution, retaining punishment as a conflict management option. Proposals for

consultative decision-making practices, however, retained an emphasis on adult over student

control of the social environment. Nargis and Alia suggested, for example, that teacher

authority figures should value student/subordinate input but hold decision-making power.

Similarly, participants’ emphasis on consultative decision making for teachers suggested

challenging the unfair use of punishment, in contrast to the predominant reliance of blaming

and exclusion in punishment policies. Mohammed and Javaid implied that consultative

decision-making practices would elicit student input before employing punishment policies.

For example, Javaid suggested using reasoning over harsh disciplinary measures, however his

mention of an ex-millitary cadet’s enforcement of discipline in the school showed that

indiscipline would be harshly dealt with.

The strong reliance on control, embedded within conflict resolution strategies that emphasize

authority decision making could be undemocratic because it proposes narrow regulation of

student behaviour and upholding traditional adult-student roles. In doing so, students were

possibly offered superficial opportunities for decision making that may not enable them to

adequately learn decision making, critical thinking or self autonomy. These student-directed

or teacher-directed decision making proposals ignored institutionalized practices in schools

that would reinforce inequitable power systems. Student disciplinary committees, for

example, might provide privileged students with greater decision-making power, while

disproportionately imposing punishment policies on disadvantaged student groups. This over-

reliance on control limited students’ decision making power. Power was restricted by an

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authority, thus the overarching lesson in citizenship learnt by students might be that the

ultimate power lies with the authority figure.

Iqbal, Mariam and Nargis’s suggestions for student mediation attempted to shift from over-

reliance on punishment by teaching skills to providing students opportunities to practice skills

for dialogue-oriented conflict resolution. Such strategies, in teaching students dialogue-

oriented and problem-solving approaches and thus a positive peacemaking approach to

conflict resolution could curb the over-reliance on punishment in Pakistani schools and, in

enabling students to practice self-autonomy, provide students citizenship-relevant learning

opportunities. At the same time, a caution: such student-directed approaches emphasized

individual social skills development have been successful in disputes between students of

similar status (Bickmore, 2002). Because of the power imbalance underlying social conflict,

simple conflict resolution approaches would not sufficiently handle harassment and bullying

(Bickmore, 2002)

Participants also specifically described conflict resolution strategies focused on individual

skills development as capable of challenging systemic inequity. For example, Alia believed

that debate could provide girls communication skills, which could enable them to secure

better jobs and be more assertive with their in-laws. Similarly, Iqbal, Mariam and Nargis

depicted procedures, such as mediation and student committees focused on interpersonal

conflict, as enabling students to learn negotiation skills and roles for self-autonomy.

Mohammed sought to challenge bureaucratic structures and Nargis to establish more

equitable conflict resolution processes. These participants, did not address inequity

underlying social conflicts in school except for Nargis who, upon probing, suggested that the

teacher could select a wider range of juvenile students to be part of mediation programs, and

Mariam who reflected that ‘not everyone can be good at peer mediation.’ Individual

communication-based strategies are clearly insufficient for addressing systemic inequity.

Indeed, individuals usually cannot simply ‘shun biases’ through improved communication as

Nargis suggests. Bias awareness education would require confrontation of bias through

examining personal biases, critical examination of how these may be systemically

perpetuated and positive education about minority groups (Stephan, 1995). Although

positive, planned interaction between opposing groups (contact) is an important component

for prejudice reduction — as Javaid proposes —prejudice is alleviated only when necessary

conditions are in place. These include a supportive environment for contact, equal status

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between groups prolonged and frequent contact, and cooperative environments (Allport cited

by Tal- Or et al., 2002) These participants comparatively simple approaches to prejudice

reduction for students ( Javaid, Mariam and Iqbal) and for dealing with teacher bias (Nargis)

therefore, would probably not be sufficient to alleviate bias. Participants’ responses suggest a

liberal democratic emphasis on individual skills/choice. Although interviewees examples of

conflict (especially concerning teachers) didn’t reveal an assumption that individuals were

embedded in a neutral context, their proposed conflict resolution strategies did. Citizenship

relevant learning opportunities implied by these strategies would thus be restricted to learning

dialogue oriented approaches and smaller decision making opportunities within a flexible

authoritarian regime. Given that the majority of these participants’ suggestions did not

suggest such ensuring these opportunities were available across diverse groups, their

democratization of conflict management opportunities possibly could benefit only a few

‘good’ students in the school

Participants’ responses were more likely to advocate inclusion of content for conflict

resolution, rather than suggesting teaching learning processes to promote critical thinking.

Participants recommendations were as likely to be on a curricular level (Iqbal, Mariam,

Nargis) and a co-curricular level (Javaid, Alia and Mohammed) Iqbal was the only participant

who considered bias (exclusion of minorities in conception of citizenship) in the curriculum

suggesting that teachers from minority/disadvantaged groups were possibly more likely to

confront bias in curriculum because they had to. The emphasis on content in participants’

responses substantiates Dean’s finding that Pakistani schools focus on the knowledge and

some values for citizenship but less so on the skills (problem-solving and decision making)

and values (civic mindedness, critical consciousness) for citizenship education (Dean, 2005).

Alia and Iqbal’s emphasis on teachers’ emphasis on kindness and loyalty suggests what Dean

calls “a values explicit” approach to citizenship education.

In summary, participants’ understandings of conflict among students tended to emphasize

those that were overt, challenged authority. Mariam, Javaid and Iqbal’s responses suggested

that their own experiences of discrimination or discriminatory school policy could have led

them to identify conflict as social and institutionalized school practices in promoting conflict.

All participants’ strategies focused on individual skills development and that these could

alleviate bias. However, Mohammed and Alia’s experiences in authoritarian contexts

suggested that disputants would need to be on equal status and Nargis, when probed further,

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did, suggest affirmative measures to prevent communication-based conflict resolution

measures from only benefiting ‘good’ students. Participants’ construction of conflict were

evidently shaped by dominant ‘social knowledge. At the same time, their understandings

varied ’ based on the particularities of their individual experiences with conflict based on

their social and professional identity and experiences.

WHAT IS CITIZENSHIP IN THE CONTEXT OF CONFLICT?

Citizenship as Fulfilment of Social Duty

Responses to the question ‘what is the relationship of conflict to citizenship’ showed that

Mohammed, Iqbal, Alia in particular understood conflict as misbehaviour or violation of

social norms and citizenship as obedience and fulfillment of social duty. Mohammed, for

example, argued that a teacher’s prescribed social role was to prepare lessons that were

interesting and appropriate for students’ learning level. He said that if the teacher didn’t

prepare their lesson, “[and told the students] ‘just sit idle’, [the students] do mischievous

things, do misbehaviour, then there will be conflict.” This depicted conflict as student

indiscipline and suggested that the teachers’ practice of citizenship and education, could

reduce students destructive (indiscipline) conflict. Iqbal also focused on socially appropriate

behaviour as citizenship:

“If I have this sense of how you should sit how you should talk. .. When somebody has this sense that how to treat others, and how to contribute then I think when we. . . fulfill our civic

responsibilities, If we spoil the civic situation, then conflict spreads.”

Iqbal’s interpretation of citizenship like Mohammed seemed to equate conflict with violation

of social norms. Alia too, believed citizens should be kind to others:

“ [Citizens need to be] empathic, kind, someone who takes care. . . [and] their problem will be solved, they wont get into conflict that much. . If these things are not present ,then you will have conflict in big form.”

Alia’s understanding of citizenship implied being charitable to others, and suggested that

without such a norm there would be destructive conflict. Mohammed, Alia and Iqbal’s

responses thus implied that citizenship should involve the fulfillment of socially prescribed

goals. Their approaches to conflict management for citizenship, therefore, would tend to

emphasize non-disruption and adherence to authority.

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Javaid, Mariam and Nargis represented citizenship as the rights and tolerance of coexistence.

For example, Nargis, believed “rights give us human dignity. They give us self esteem,

confidence, they give us certain values of cooperation, co existence. . .certain values which

would be helpful in resolving conflict.” Nargis’s statement implies that conflict can be

resolved if citizenship rights — assuming that entitlement of which would promote equality

among citizens — are adhered to. Similarly, Javaid and Mariam advocated a tolerance of

alternative beliefs that could co-exist with each other. Mariam believed tolerance could help

achieve a “conflict free society.” Thus it is clear from these responses that conflict

management for citizenship as expressed in Nargis, Javaid and Mariam emphasized the goal

of equality for a non-violent society.

The above findings show that conflict was often viewed primarily as a negative phenomenon.

However, further probing revealed that participants regarded conflict as not only negative.

When Mariam and Mohammed were asked whether their emphasis on a ‘conflict free

society’ meant that conflict was undesirable, they made a distinction between ‘intellectual’

and ‘violent’ conflict. According to Mariam, an ‘intellectual’ conflict entailed a “conflict of

ideas, whereas a physical conflict could be for the sake of territory or material gain which

does not result in any win-win situation.” She said that without intellectual conflict “we

would stop all growth and we would make every person passive and tolerant of everything.”

Mariam, here, problematizes ‘tolerance,’ suggesting that intellectual conflict is important for

a more critical democratic tolerance.

Like Mariam, Mohammed made a distinction between the way in which conflict is

manifested — he regarded physical arguments and fights as negative, whereas he viewed

conflict of content, dealt with through discussion or dialogue, as being potentially

constructive. I asked Mohammed to clarify why he believed that he needed to teach his

students to disagree with him, while at the same time he has said that if roles and

responsibilities were fulfilled there would be no conflict. He responded by differentiating

between disagreement and conflict, then terming disagreement as “conflict of content only.” I

then probed further:

Fazilat: “what if some students says when you are giving the definition that sir I don’t agree

with your definition and you have given them permission to disagree with you. . isn’t that

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conflict?

Mohammed: No, it’s not because they have learnt.”

Mohammed, therefore, uses the term conflict for something negative, and regards

disagreement as sometimes positive. Thus Mohammed and Mariam clarified they had been

using the term conflict to refer to its negative manifestations, such as misbehaviour or

violence or arguments. (I did not question the other four participants about this.)

In summary, participants may have described conflict as a negative phenomenon, implying

citizenship goals that emphasized adherence to authority and assimilation, but perhaps the

problem here was language. Those who discussed this distinction also believed that conflict

(disagreement) could be a positive phenomenon. Mariam and Mohammed’s understanding of

conflict as critical thinking suggests that they had previously associated the word “conflict”

with negative or violent behaviour. A view of conflict or dissent as negative to citizenship

would emphasize obedience and the preservation of social norms, but clearly all this study’s

participants did not consider dissent or critical thinking contrary to citizenship. Iqbal,

Mohammed, Mariam, Javaid, Nargis and Alia who suggested strategies for critical thinking

as conflict resolution reaffirmed this.

3. WHAT CONDITIONS ARE NEEDED FOR CONFLICT AND CITIZENSHIP

EDUCATION IN PAKISTAN?

In discussing the challenges to the implementation of Conflict Resolution Education,

participants acknowledged the need to address systemic issues manifest as hierarchal

decision-making systems, inequitable conflict resolution processes, and a biased curriculum.

Nargis and Mohammed suggested the need for dialogue oriented conflict resolution

approaches in society. The tension between strategies taught in the Citizenship Certificate

Course and their applicability within participants’ contexts was evident. Participants

differentiated, as Mohammed put it, their “own” way of dealing with conflict from the “rules

and regulations” of the course. Nargis discussed how existing informal conflict resolution

processes within the Pakistani context promoted an exertion of power over the weak. She

attributed this to parenting practices that promoted ‘fighting to get your night’, and decision

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making and disciplinary practices in schools. Similarly, Mohammed said course participants

handled conflicts their “own way” rather than using what was taught in the course, such as

listening to the point of view of others and using negotiation in decision making. Mohammed

and Nargis further discussed how decision-making authorities in communication-based

approaches to conflict resolution adopt resolutions that resulted in win-lose situations.

The evident tension between the individualist communication-based course strategies and

existing conflict resolution practices, suggested that inequitable conflict resolution practices,

systemically promoted through disciplinary measures and decision making practices in

society and school, prevented dialogue-oriented conflict resolution processes (such as those

promoted in the course) among individuals. Participants’ responses implied that they were

probably not as comfortable implementing conflict resolution strategies as they would be

with the integration of critical thinking strategies within the formal curriculum, which also

suggested a tension between course-taught strategies and participants own contexts. Javaid,

for example, said that teaching anger management would not be taken seriously by his

students and discussed how teaching about conflicts around the world was more suitable to

his students. Mariam also mentioned that not everyone can be good at peer mediation and

chose to focus on the importance of different points of view within the curriculum. These

participants’ responses suggest that a tension in the implementation of conflict resolution

strategies as taught in the course, and participant’s respective contexts. This tension could

suggest that participants perhaps considered teaching-learning approaches evident within

these participants’ formal curriculum as conflict resolution to be more legitimate and

accessible than the inclusion of conflict resolution skills such as communication or

procedures such as negotiation or peer mediation for conflict resolution in schools.

Other participants suggested that existing Pakistani society and school conflict resolution

processes could also result in constructive conflict. Mariam implied, for example, that

religious leaders in the community possibly offered informal conflict resolution mechanisms.

For example, she discussed how acceptance by religious leaders (who had been initially

resistant) was a key hindrance in defining the community’s acceptance of the school for girls

that she was volunteering in:

“Our biggest hurdle, I would say, is getting the religious leaders of those communities to accept us as a presence. They felt we were there to teach girls what they were not meant to be taught, ideologies we would give to them were not the kind of ideologies they wanted their

girls to learn and once we started working it has been a long and uphill task. But we have

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realized that within the communities we have had such an impact that those religious leaders who are unwilling to send their daughters now bring their daughters because they say ‘okay

because it’s [this] community school we’ll let you go.”

Mariam’s statement shows that religious leaders were a key hindrance to their establishment

of the school, but that they were motivated to accept the school when girls in the community

began to attend it. Iqbal’s description of a conflict situation he handled positively suggested

that mediation was used constructively in society. Iqbal, as mentioned earlier, he mediated a

potentially serious conflict involving a teacher who had abused a student, by speaking with

all involved in the conflict — influential people, parents, community leaders and the student.

Mariam and Iqbal hinted at existing informal conflict resolution processes by authorities,

religious or community leaders and elders. The existence of such processes reinforces Funk

and Said, Irani and Gillani’s findings that community leaders and elders in Islamic societies

often legitimize conflict resolution practices that emphasize communal cohesion. However,

my thesis does not provide enough data to actually examine the influence of such processes,

for example, whether these are conducive or detrimental to critical democratic citizenship

although this opens up a possible area for future research.

As touched on earlier, Alia and Mohammed, both working in the government system,

discussed the need for systemic processes that would enable accountability, equal resource

distribution and dialogue-oriented decision-making processes that could challenge

bureaucratic structures. Mohammed, for example recognized that dialogue-oriented conflict

resolution approaches could not be practiced successfully in the government system due to

hierarchal decision making structure He described the government system way of handling

conflicts: “we don’t apply rules and regulations but resolve conflicts our way” which he

described as “not listening to others and imposing a decision.” Mohammed alluded to a

bureaucracy in the government sector in which authority figures had no accountability and

could treat subordinates any way they wanted. Alia described inadequate provision of

resources as a result of a lack of accountability within the government system discussing that

her school had no staff room. She implied the need for processes of accountability by

mentioning that the big sewer against the wall near the gate of the school was not in the

schools jurisdiction, therefore, the problem could not be resolved. Both Alia and Mohammed

suggest the need for systemic processes that would enable dialogue oriented conflict

management approaches and equitable resource distribution within the government system.

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Iqbal, Mohammed and Javaid identified the exam-focused, rote learning based Pakistani

education system as a challenge to implementing conflict resolution education suggesting the

need for a more flexible, critically oriented and inclusive curriculum. Iqbal and Mohammed,

for example, discussed how critical thinking was difficult to integrate in a curriculum that did

not encourage it. However, he said, “one thing we can’t conquer in this situation is that

children say that ‘sir we cant write this that you are telling us because we are focused on the

curriculum’. This is a challenge”. Iqbal’s statement shows that his students were well aware

that only what is within the curriculum is important alluding to an exam or textbook focused

system.

Sumilarly, Mohammed suggested that the education system did not encourage critical

thinking. As discussed earlier, he discussed efforts to establish an open classroom climate by

encouraging dissenting viewpoints in his class. However, he said, “usually it does not

happen.” The statement is not completely clear, but it can be assumed based on literature on

the government education system in Pakistan, as well as comments from participants’

interviews, that students are not encouraged to present dissenting viewpoints within the

curriculum or teaching strategies that are prevalent especially within the government

education system.

Alia and Javaid alluded to the way that the emphasis on academics prevented flexibility

within the school curriculum. Alia’s Action Plan scheduled a month of conflict resolution

education related activities as the beginning of the year, because the academic load was less

at that time. Similarly, Javaid believed he had a greater chance to integrate conflict resolution

through a co-curricular approach, rather than teaching conflict resolution through an already

very heavy core syllabus. Alia and Javaid’s responses show that an emphasis on the core

syllabus, possibly through evaluation measures, led to the implementation of conflict

resolution as a co-curricular or year-opening activity.

Javaid suggested that a curricular focus on conflict resolution could clash with the exam-

focused curriculum in light of which dialogue and equity initiatives could appear as ‘non-

serious’. He said that if they were to teach conflict resolution in his class, his students would

not take him seriously: “Okay, when it comes to conflict you have to cool down, you have to

take long breaths, you have to reflect on yourself, you have to find a baseline. [If conflict

resolution is taught this way the students will] say what nonsense are you talking about. . to

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me [laughs]}’ Javaid explained that

“The target group [in the Citizenship Certificate Course] was different, but with students

[teachers in training] that come to [my school] for their intermediate they are not interested in

studying conflict. There might be some students who are in social welfare organizations and some of the girls might be interested in studying human rights because they are very sensitive to these issues. But the boys. . . want to go for sports they want to have their time to eat.”

Javaid thus focused on teaching conflict resolution through co-curricular activities. Javaid’s

statements reflect an assumption that the explicit teaching of conflict resolution as being no

more than some anger management strategies, and second that such anger management

strategies are possibly effeminate. This impression was reinforced by his example of a female

teacher who tried to adopt such an approach with the result that none of the students would

speak in her class. Javaid’s understanding of conflict resolution, therefore, suggests that

values underlying inclusive or equity-oriented education are different from those underlying

serious academic work.

Challenges to the implementation of citizenship education in interviewees responses

identified in Pakistan included systemic issues rooted in culture, hierarchal decision making,

lack of resources, and exam-focused curriculum in the government sector, and heavy syllabus

in the private education sector. These participants alluded to issues in the education system

such as decision making systems, curriculum, teaching-learning and evaluation processes,

especially in the government sector as impediments to implementing dialogue oriented

approaches to conflict resolution and the inclusion of conflictual content, and thus citizenship

relevant learning opportunities such as the development of decision-making or critical

thinking skills. Participants’ responses also hinted at tensions between existing and course

taught conflict educational strategies that possibly reflected their assumptions about conflict

training as well as existing conflict management processes in Pakistan. Mohammed and

Nargis appeared to assume a universal precept of conflict resolution based on which course

taught strategies were right and those already practised wrong. Javaid and Mariam suggested

that course taught conflict resolution strategies were value-laden and different from

culturally-embedded notions of conflict resolution. For example, Javaid suggested that the

course taught approach was perhaps even effeminate implying that it was at odds with

dominant male-oriented conflict resolution approaches. Mariam suggested that some

dialogue- oriented approaches (like peer mediation) assumed a knowledge of skills that

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culturally people did not commonly possess in Pakistan. Alias and Mohammed’s frustration

with their management in the public sector suggested the unavailability of State-sanctioned

processes to enable dialogue-oriented conflict resolution. As tensions between existing and

course taught conflict resolution strategies could reflect participants’ assumptions about

existing and course taught conflict resolution approaches, this could be an area worth

exploring further.

CONCLUSION

Participants’ responses indicated that participants valued extending decision making

opportunities to students and subordinates but also emphasized adherence to authority.

Authoritarianism seemed to be especially prevalent for those working within the government

education system. Participants did recognize systemic inequity in the form of bias and

exclusion as a form of conflict in school, though primarily as expressed in individual teacher-

behavior in teacher-student conflicts, and challenges to rules in conflict among students.

Some participants (possibly based on their work contexts) did regard institutional practices in

schools as adversely affecting students. Participants working in authoritarian government

systems recognized that communication based strategies could work with equal status

disputants, and were not so effective in more complex social conflicts. Last, conflict in the

context of citizenship was understood as upholding social citizenship norms but also (if

participants were probed further) encouraging intellectual growth.

One of the richest areas worth exploring further from these participants’ interviews,

mentioned above, is the differences in participants’ responses. Participants’ responses showed

that they upheld authority in varying degrees. Mariam, for example, proposed to give student

monitors on the committee the power to frame as well as implement rules but limited their

decision making power by proposing that delinquent students be accountable this committee

as well as school authorities. However, Mariam proposed to give more power to students in

her school than Alia who suggested student monitors that did not have rule-making power.

Thus, which factors would influence these participants’ emphasis on upholding authority?

And, do government schools uphold authoritarianism more than other schools? The

difference in Alia, Mohammed and Javaid’s understanding of conflict with authority raise the

question, what notions of citizenship are promoted in (affluent) private school(s)? Javaid’s

discussion of grouping in his school also makes the exploration of student prejudice in

schools a worthy area to explore further.

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Participants primarily ignored strategies to deal with systemic conflict within their responses.

Nargis, however, suggested measures to include misbehaving students in class committees

once I probed further about possible measures to prevent only good students’ participation in

conflict resolution procedures. How would participants, therefore, deal with more complex

social conflicts such as bias, harassment and prejudice, which they didn’t discuss in their

strategies for conflict resolution education unless probed? Participants who identified

systemic conflict possibly were also more likely to have discussed experiences of

marginalization on the basis of gender or religion (Alia, Iqbal) or if policies in the school

were discriminatory (Mariam, Javaid). The relationship between marginalization and the

recognition of systemic conflict could be the subject of a larger-scale study. Another possible

factor that may have influenced participants that could be looked into further is whether

participants’ working with adults (ie teacher trainers or principal) would be more prone to

suggest (and thus open to) educational strategies that invite students’ point of view and share

power with students than those working with children? Again, the limited data is restricting,

but participants’ responses suggest this possibility.

Participants also hinted at existing approaches to conflict resolution in Pakistan — such as

elders and community leaders - in their interviews. Thus, in relation to existing conflict

resolution processes in Pakistan, how influential are elders/community leaders are to existing

conflict resolution processes? Would conflict resolution by elders/community leaders be

likely to challenge or uphold inequitable power structures? Are there shared values about

conflict resolution strategies in Pakistani society and what are they based on? Exploring the

tensions/challenges that participants believe impede their ability to implement conflict

learning could shed light on participants’ assumptions about conflict training and existing

approaches to conflict education.

In relation to this study as a whole, participants predominant understandings of conflict as a

negative phenomenon suggested that the results of this study might have been different had

the term conflict been replaced with different words such as dissent or bias which could be

explored further. A future study could also examine how these course participants’

understandings of conflict, citizenship and education were supported/challenged by their

practice.

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The strength of this interview approach is its attentiveness to particularities in participants’

responses suggesting that there can be certain conditions within which participants are more

attentive to inequitable power structures or the role of systemic violence. These conditions

could include personal experiences of disadvantage or explicit policies that discriminate

against specific groups in their contexts. The qualitative nature of this study also highlighted

differences among participants’ responses, which suggest diverse possibilities for critical

democratic citizenship education. For example, Mariam and Mohammed did not view

dissent/differing points of view to be contrary to citizenship. Their responses suggested that

the word conflict and the negative connotations associated with it could have influenced how

participants viewed it in relation to citizenship. The weakness of this interview approach is

the ‘thin’ data used to interpret participants’ understandings of conflict, citizenship and

conflict and citizenship education. Data was based on a single ninety minute interviews and

Action Plans that weren’t as detailed as I had hoped. As discussed in the Methodology

chapter, the relatively unstructured interview questions resulted in interviews where

participants talked about a range of things rather than address specific concepts. This may

have prevented assumptions about participants understandings of conflict i.e. just because

participants did not address an aspect of conflict resolution/citizenship education did not

mean they did not think it was important.

Despite its weakness, this analysis of participants’ interviews and Action Plans can suggest

broader ramifications for (exemplary) Pakistani citizenship education (practice and plans) for

conflict’s role in citizenship education, based on six exemplary educators’ responses/Action

Plans. Entrenched notions of citizenship as passive and traditional adult-student roles

apparent participants’ responses and Action Plans as well as Course Documents, show that

Pakistani citizenship education would require, as Bush and Saltarelli suggest, two-fold

deconstruction and reconstruction of current conceptions of conflict and citizenship in

schools. As discussed in Chapter 1, educators and students could highlight existing systemic

processes within school/society that promote exclusion and obedience, and thus passive

citizenship, and integrate/advocate for more inclusive processes that would provide

opportunities for, and promote, critical democratic citizenship.

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CHAPTER 6: THE WAY FORWARD

The conceptual framework informing this study shows that conflict is integral to critical

democratic citizenship. In the Literature Review chapter, I identified critical democratic

citizenship (in contrast to authoritarian and liberal-democratic paradigms) as my preferred

paradigm of citizenship as it highlights and challenges inequitable distribution of power in

society. I discussed how conflict is a lens that can illuminate distribution of power and how it

is exercised. Democratic processes are integral to constructive conflict resolution, as they are

means for negotiating and advocating equitable relationships and distribution of resources in

society, and providing processes for conflict resolution for citizens. Thus democratic

processes are a means for constructive conflict resolution.

Schools play a key role in developing students’ capacities for citizenship. Approaches to

conflict management in schools, within the implicit and formal curriculum, that enable

students to practice critical thinking and provide significant opportunities for decision making

could develop students’ capacities for critical democratic citizenship. As teachers play a key

role in shaping what students learn within the informal and formal curriculum, this study

considered their role in framing possibilities for critical democratic citizenship education in

the Pakistani context.

This qualitative study sought to explore the conceptualizations of conflict and conflict

education and their relationship to citizenship education, by interviewing selected Pakistani

education leaders who were attending a Citizenship Certificate course, and also analyzing

documents from that course, in order to examine possibilities for critical democratic

citizenship education within the Pakistani educational landscape. In order to do so, I

interviewed six out of twenty four of the course participants. I also conducted a document

analysis of their Action Plans (course-assigned plans to implement Citizenship Education

within their respective contexts) as well as a document analysis of course documents of the

two major sections of the course — the Citizenship and the Conflict Resolution sections.

Course Documents analysis illuminated contradictory goals for citizenship that were

embedded within the Citizenship and Conflict Resolution sections of the Certificate Course.

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The focus of the Citizenship section was on the identification of societal power structures and

how these governed the everyday processes of citizens, as well as strategies that advocate

social change — capacities important for critical democratic citizenship. In contrast, the

concept of citizenship apparent within the Conflict Resolution section did not address the role

of social location (equity) in defining opportunities for democratic agency. The underlying

assumption implied by the predominant communication-based strategies taught in the

Conflict Resolution section was that disputants in conflict situations had equal access to

power, thus could rely on strategies focused on individual-level conflict management. The

implication within these conflict resolution strategies that the individual was abstracted from

a social context reflected a liberal-democratic notion of the citizen. These findings from the

Course Documents analysis showed that approaches to citizenship education can have

contradictory goals, and demonstrated the need for educators to be clear about the cultural

and political values informing their practice.

The understandings of conflict of the six course participants —Alia, Iqbal, Javaid, Mariam,

Mohammed and Nargis — reflected a range of authoritarian, critical and liberal-democratic

notions of citizenship. Their proposed educational strategies for conflict management,

however, emphasized almost exclusively individual level communication- based approaches

to conflict resolution. Although these valued some student involvement in decision-making,

they also emphasized adherence to authority. Over-reliance of control in some of these

strategies supported more authoritarian decision-making approaches. Most participants

understood conflict as a violation of social norms and thus citizenship as upholding social

norms. Mohammed and Mariam, however, clarified that their usage of the word conflict, in

the context of citizenship, had referred to negative conflict (violence and fights), which was

different from constructive conflict (different pomts of view). Participants identified factors

at the systemic level as challenges to the implementation of a conflict-centred citizenship

education.

Participants’ emphasis on adherence to authority within their proposed conflict resolution

strategies reflected entrenched values about citizenship (citizenship as relatively passive) and

about adult —student roles (adult as the primary decision maker). Their emphasis on changing

individual student/teacher conflict management behaviour assumed that individuals’ actions

were governed by unfettered individual choices: this assumes a liberal-democratic notion of

citizenship. Some participants, however (especially those marginalized by gender or religious

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minority status within their respective contexts), recognized the role of systemic factors (such

as equity and hierarchy) in conflict, thus reflecting a critical understanding of citizenship.

There were several links between the course document analysis and participants’ interview

comments and Action Plans. Critical-democratic understanding of conflict suggests that

individuals and society share a dialectic relationship where each influences the other

(Lederach, 1995). A major theme considered in the citizenship component of the Certificate

Course were that the citizen is embedded within a social context. All participants, for

example, described systemic conflict manifested on a societal or a school level, identifying

these phenomena as examples of conflict. Mariam and Javaid’s focus on the role of school

processes in promoting systemic conflict also reflected a view that the individual is governed

by social structures rather than only by individual choice. Participants’ examples of

discrimination, prejudice, or authoritarianism conflicts also acknowledged that conflict did

not only occur on an individual level but could be perpetuated systemically.

Participants considered school education to be a manifestation of broader social processes.

Schools therefore appeared as microcosms of society and citizenship education developing

capacities for school and society. For example, Nargis believed that parenting approaches and

punitive approaches employed by the teacher promoted a culture of aggression. All

interviewees depicted schools as institutions that could prepare students for society, to enable

systemic change. Students, therefore, were depicted in interviews as learning and practicing

citizenship that would enable them act upon their social environment, thus being agents of

change. The documents of the Citizenship section of the Certificate Course also emphasized

the importance of the participation of the individual in decision-making structures that govern

them. Similarly, interviewees consistently emphasized valuing student participation in

decision making. For example, they suggested institutionalizing mechanisms for student

involvement through student elections for monitors (Alia, Nargis and Mariam). Some of

participants’ interview comments and Action Plans thus suggested that they were guided by

critical-democratic approaches to teaching learning approaches that emphasized critical

thinking, student decision making which they believed could lead students develop

citizenship capacities.

Participants’ problematization of notions of citizenship, and their emphasis on teaching-

learning strategies that encouraged different points of view and use of alternative sources thus

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challenging the authority of the textbook that supported critical approaches to citizenship

education. Iqbal, for instance, illustrated how he dealt with citizenship as a contested term in

his classroom, by supplementing exclusionary notions of citizenship with verses from the

Christian Gospel that emphasize equality. Both Mariam and Iqbal advocated including

different points of view in the teaching of history, and Mohammed encouraged students to

challenge the definitions he presented in class. These strategies reflected participants’ efforts

to include controversy/ different points of view in the classroom and thus to integrate

opportunities for critical thinking within teaching-learning processes.

Another central theme within the Citizenship section of the Certificate course was the

emphasis on the individual as capable of collectively advocating for social change with the

goal of a just society. All of the participants suggested that individuals had the power to

change society. All participants’ discussions of proposed conflict strategies implied that these

individual communication skills could challenge systemic inequity. For example, Alia

believed teaching girls confidence could provide them with better and more secure futures.

Javaid believed he could challenge prejudiced sectarian attitudes among students.

Mohammed wanted to change hierarchal government structures through an ‘evolutionary

versus revolutionary’ approach, Mariam institutionalized measures for students to have a

voice through proposing a student disciplinary committee, and Iqbal by supplementing the

omission of minority groups from Social Studies textbooks by verses from the Gospel. Nargis

advocated replacing a culture of aggression with a culture of dialogue and discussion,

beginning with schools. Participants’ understandings of the individual as agent of change

represented an understanding of the individual as located within a social context, whose

actions would be governed by individual choice. Participants emphasized more on change by

individuals rather than collective change.

In comparison, the Conflict Resolution section of the Certificate Course assumed an a-

critical, practical approach to conflict resolution that primarily depicted conflict resolution

strategies as a set of prescribed interpersonal skills that, if used the right way, could lead to

settlement of conflict. All participants’ proposed conflict strategies suggested that they

regarded conflict resolution as a set of prescribed skills for citizenship that emphasized short-

term settlement of individual disputes. Mohammed said this most explicitly, referring to

conflict resolution as “rules and regulations” that needed to be practiced until students got it

right. At the same time, he differentiated between “our way” of handling conflict and the

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approach taught in the Conflict Resolution section. This suggests that he viewed predominant

Pakistani approaches to conflict management as different from what was taught in the course

— and that he viewed the approach depicted in the course (and the assumed notion of peace)

as the universally right one. Nargis also suggested that there was a “right” way of handling

conflict, which she identified as the way that was practiced in Western countries (consistent

with that promoted in the Conflict Resolution course section), whereas within her experiences

of conflict in Pakistan it was managed wrongly. Thus she emphasized teaching conflict

resolution formally throughout her interview. Javaid and Mariam suggested that conflict

resolution as taught in the Certificate course section was not necessarily applicable in their

contexts — implying that conflict resolution was a body of specific skills imported from

abroad. Javaid, for example, interpreted the course’s approach to conflict resolution as skills

to control anger, while Mariam said peer mediation was something not everyone could be

good at. The underlying assumption of neutrality and individual-level agency for managing

conflict that was embedded within participants’ responses (and the Conflict Resolution

course section) were illustrated by their emphasis on individual communication based

strategies to alleviate systemic conflict. For example, Javaid suggested students’ prejudice

could be changed through increased intergroup contact in small group work, and Nargis

intended to teach teachers to shun their biases. Participants’ responses depicted individual

agency as governing manifestations of (individual and systemic) conflict, thus focused on

improved communication in a similar way to the Conflict Resolution section of the

Certificate course.

Examining the links between participants responses and Action Plans and the course

documents suggests that participants’ examples of conflict and citizenship considered the

individual to be embedded within a social context and as capable of affecting social change —

prevalent themes in the Citizenship section course documents. Some participants proposed

conflict resolution strategies to include different viewpoints, thus adopting a critical approach

to the curriculum (in some cases). Primarily, though, interview participants’ suggested

educational strategies emphasized changing individual student behaviour using specific

communication-based strategies, assuming conflict resolution strategies to be cross-culturally

generalizable. This suggested that participants were partial to the individualist liberal-

democratic approach to citizenship apparent within the Conflict Resolution section of the

course.

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These emerging contradictory goals embedded in the different sections of the Certificate

Course may have influenced the contradictory goals for citizenship education in participants’

responses and Action Plans. However, it is also possible that participants may have chosen to

focus on educational strategies that were in line with the Conflict Resolution section of the

course because I, their interviewer, had been briefly part of the instructional team for this

section of the course. Although of course the numbers of selected participants in this study do

not make these findings generalizable, participants who had experienced or witnessed

marginalization on the basis of gender and religion were more likely to discuss systemic

conflict than those who didn’t discuss such experiences in their personal or professional lives.

Mariam, Iqbal, and Javaid discussed systemic conflict more than other participants. In

addition, Javaid’s understandings of conflict management suggested that students from

privileged backgrounds may have more opportunities to develop democratic agency, based on

comparatively flexible discipline regimes, compared with students with low-income

backgrounds.

Participants’ also proposed educational strategies emphasized adults retaining authority as the

ultimate decision maker — reflecting the authoritarian educational structures that are prevalent

in Pakistani public sector schools. This suggested that the focus on individual

communication-based strategies in the Conflict Resolution section of the Certificate Course

was not sufficient to challenge entrenched cultural notions of authoritarianism, in spite of the

more critical approach taken in the Citizenship section of the course. This is illustrated by the

finding that half of the participants expressed an understanding of citizenship as communal

responsibility (being kind, behaving well with others, fulfilling prescribed social roles). This

perspective, in its emphasis on preservation of social norms, emphasized adherence to

authority. The other half of the participants (Nargis, Javaid and Iqbal) emphasized students’

and citizens’ entitlement to rights, equality and tolerance. Thus while emphasis on authority

that reflected passive notion of citizenship — contrasting with notions of citizenship promoted

in both sections of the Citizenship Certificate course - could be assumed to be a factor shaped

by participants’ cultural contexts, at the same time there was an openness to critical citizen

agency among at least some participants. This suggests the influence of social knowledge

based on social experiences on participants’ conceptualizations of conflict education beyond

course teachings.

Participants’ responses also showed that they understood and used the word conflict as a

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negative. Further probing in two of the interviews suggested that negative connotations

associated with the word could have led participants to emphasize strategies to eliminate

conflict. This highlights the need for future theory and research to deconstruct and reconstruct

the term conflict in the context of citizenship and school climate, in order to more clearly

examine possibilities for constructive conflict in the form of different viewpoints, diversity,

controversy, debate, and advocacy.

This study highlights values underlying a citizenship education course and, in doing so,

challenges the assumption of citizenship as a universally shared term. This finding shows that

that training/education approaches promote specific social knowledge and thus differing

notions of citizenship. The need for educators/trainers to clarify values underlying

training/education initiatives is reinforced by this study. The attentiveness to particularities in

participants’ responses, suggest that there can be certain conditions under which such

educators would be more attentive to inequitable power structures or the role of systemic

violence. These conditions may include personal experiences of disadvantage or explicit

policies that discriminate against specific groups in their contexts. The qualitative nature of

this study also highlighted differences among participants’ responses, which suggest

possibilities for critical democratic citizenship education. For example, Mariam and

Mohammed did not view dissent/differing points of view to be contrary to citizenship, and

suggested the negative connotations associated with the word conflict could have influenced

how participants portrayed its relation to citizenship. This study was grounded in a

meaningful context — the Citizenship Certificate course in Karachi — after which

participants intended to work to promote citizenship education in their respective Pakistani

educational contexts. The analysis of course documents as well as participant interviews and

Action Plans enabled well-rounded data, even in this small exploratory study. The selected

participants’ contributions in interviews and Action Plans, in particular, provide a glimpse of

how critical democratic citizenship education could take shape within the Pakistani

educational context. The course document analysis and participants’ responses/Action Plans

also open up areas to investigate further in research initiatives.

The weakness of my method used in this study was primarily ‘thin’ data, as discussed in

Chapter 5. Although Course Documents were relatively comprehensive, they cannot show us

what Course Leaders’ practice in the classroom. For example, Citizenship course documents

may not have addressed bias awareness or the informal curriculum in these documents but

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may have done so in the course. My data analysis could have been much richer had I also

included the actual practice of citizenship education in the course, as well as interviews with

Course Leaders. The single ninety-minute interviews with only six participants, and perusal

of their Action Plans that were not as detailed as I had expected, also resulted in relatively

‘thin’ data. Participants in this research were also atypical educators who were interviewed

right after completing the component of the Citizenship Education Certificate course,

therefore there is no reason to assume that the six research participants were typical of the 24

in the Citizenship certificate course, never mind of other educators in Pakistan. Participants’

course involvement, and my own role as Research Associate and volunteer with the

Citizenship Rights and Responsibilities Pakistan project, were both strengths and

weaknesses: given my instructor role (albeit small and before the outset of this research),

participants might have been motivated to showcase what they believed I had wanted them to

learn from the course. Participants’ responses could also have been influenced by a number

of things — relatively unstructured interviews, use of the word ‘conflict’ in interviews, and

interview questions’ emphasis on what participants thought conflict education should be,

rather than emphasizing how they implemented it through their Action Plans. This made me

wonder how different participants responses might have been, had I questioned them on

specific concepts in a different way. For example, the relationship between participants’

backgrounds and their conflict resolution/ citizenship education perspectives could not be

explored further with this small and ‘thin’ data set.

My insider role inevitably also influenced how I assessed the validity of the data, which could

also be a strength. Exploring conceptualizations of conflict and citizenship of participants in

this course was also a strength, as the different interpretations of the same course highlighted

participants’ own perceptions of conflict and citizenship education, and their overlapping and

diverse viewpoints about proposed and feasible citizenship education practice in Pakistan. As

discussed earlier, focusing on this course to prepare educators to teach citizenship education,

grounded this study in a meaningful context. Training or educational initiatives can promote

different notions of citizenship — some that may do more harm than good - even when

undertaken in the best interests of participants (Bush and Saltarelli, 2000, Epp, 1996). Thus it

is important to clarify the cultural and political goals informing them. Cnitically examining

the concept of citizenship to highlight contrasting goals underlying this training initiative,

therefore, could also be used to clarify goals embedded in other citizenship, peace or rights

based training/education initiatives in Pakistan.

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Implications for future citizenship education teacher development efforts, particularly in the

Pakistani context, would be the advice to consider integrating the Citizenship and Conflict

Resolution sections into one more unified course. This could entail an approach to citizenship

education similar to that in this Certificate Course, but with an emphasis on how a critical

approach to citizenship would translate into citizenship-relevant learning within the formal

and implicit curriculum of schools. In doing so, participating educators could be led to more

closely examine distribution of power within educational structures, and its implications for a

Pakistani-grounded approach to democratic citizenship education. Participants’ interview

responses and Action Plans (and the contrast between these and Citizenship section course

documents) suggest that the four-week course did seem to influence participants’ responses,

but that it was not able to address the entrenched notions of adherence to authority that were

consistently apparent in the interviews and Action plans. This suggests that this course could

be followed up with another course that could facilitate participants’ evaluation of their

current understandings of distribution and exercise of power in schools.

Further, participants’ identified challenges for conflict education suggested that the teacher

alone would not be sufficient to implement critical democratic change. Thus to implement

critical democratic citizenship education would require a multi-pronged approach that

entailing policy, curriculum, evaluation measures and decision making structures.

On a broader level, the conceptual framework informing this study was primarily constructed

from literature derived from, and relevant to, critical democratic citizenship education within

a North American context. This reliance on North American literature shows the need for

scholarly work in this area focused on, or coming from, international contexts including

South Asia and various authoritarian regimes.

Overall, this was an exploratory study, relying on ‘thin’ data, that highlights key areas for

future research based on possible research questions arising from the data discussed in the

document and interview/Action Plan analysis chapters. This study relied heavily on a few

research participants’ understandings of what they thought conflict education could and

should be. A natural thing to examine next, especially in the context of the Citizenship

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Certificate Course where the next activity was to be implementation of Action Plans in the

field, would be to study how educators participating in the Citizenship Certificate course

actually did implement their Action Plans, and what social and school factors influenced what

they were able to accomplish. The range in participants’ responses could also be explored

further. For instance, Javaid’s responses suggested that the students in his competitive and

well-resourced school might experience citizenship and citizenship education differently,

based on his relatively privileged school’s flexible discipline regimes and emphasis on

academics, in contrast with students in a low-income government school. Thus, the question

of how notions of citizenship (and practices of citizenship education) differ in Pakistan on the

basis of class could be worth exploring. Mariam and Mohammed’s clarification that their

discussions of conflict in the context of citizenship in these interviews had referred to

physical conflict, which they distinguished from intellectual conflict, suggested that the word

conflict primarily had negative connotations for participants. Exploring positive

manifestations of conflict (perhaps using different terms) could help to construct an approach

to critical democratic citizenship education within which constructive conflict would be

integral. Nargis and Mohammed differentiated between “our way” of dealing with conflict

from the approach that was taught in the course. It would, therefore, also be worth examining

indigenous approaches to conflict resolution — for example those encouraged by elders and

community leaders — and the notions of citizenship that they promote. The contradictory

goals to citizenship in the Citizenship Certificate course also highlight the need to examine

existing peace education, human rights or citizenship education approaches in Pakistan and

the notion of citizenship these promote.

This study is significant as it highlights how a citizenship education course for teachers and

educational leaders can present or imply contrasting goals of citizenship. Thus my findings

emphasize the importance of educators clarifying embedded cultural and political goals in

their practice. Secondly, it suggests that future teacher development courses should focus

more closely on existing power structures in society and how to challenge them based on the

emphasis on individual-level conflict resolution and authoritative decision makers in

participants’ proposed conflict management strategies. Future courses could possibly

integrate Citizenship and Conflict Resolution sections to develop a more consistent

framework for understanding and action. Lastly, this study shows that the exploration of

notions of conflict can highlight differences in understandings of citizenship. These

understandings reflect participants’ different social and cultural experiences. Exploring these

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differences further could be a rich area for future research for the possibilities of critical

democratic citizenship in Pakistan.

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APPENDIX 1: Consent Letter for Participants

PARTICIPANT CONSENT LETTER (TO BE PRINTED ON OISE/ UT LETTERHEAD)

Dear

I, Fazilat Thaver, am carrying out a research project as part of the requirements for completing the

Master of Arts degree at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, Canada. The following outlines the study itself and information about participation if you choose to participate. If you require any further information or explanation, please contact me at 6347611 extension 3078. If you have any worries or concerns you may also contact my thesis advisor Dr.

Kathy Bickmore at the OISE/UT in Toronto, Canada at [email protected], Phone Number (416) 923-6641 extension 3153.

The project is entitled: Understandings of Conflict and Conflict Education: Perspectives of Pakistani Educators Enrolled in a Course on Citizenship Education

The objective of the research is: to understand how Pakistani educators understand conflict and conflict education and how these understandings intersect with their and other’s understandings of democratic citizenship education.

Rationale for the Study: Pakistan can be described as an open conflict society where conflict is witnessed, heard about or experienced at close proximity. Schools, functioning as micro-societies, can play an important role in enabling students to acquire the skills and attitudes to deal with adult life. Conflict resolution education at the school level — in teaching students to understand, reflect on and deal with conflict constructively, develop critical thinking skills and participate in decision-making

structures that govern them — thus can help to prepare students for democratic citizenship.

The objectives of this study are to explore how the perspectives of Pakistani educators in the certificate course define conflict and conflict education. The longer-range purpose of this study is to apply these understandings as part of a needs assessment and culturally appropriate foundation for future educational initiatives in conflict resolution in the Pakistani context. This particular group is the

focus of this study as you have prior understanding and experience of citizenship, human rights and

conflict resolution. Your prior experience and your role as educators who will be working for the promotion of citizenship education in our society made me decided to focus on your perspectives for this study.

A Brief Overview: There are two ways you can participate in the study:

By agreeing to allow the researcher to analyse your Action Plan (assignment due at the end of the face to face component of the certificate course). All participants’ Action Plans that the researcher has

been permitted to review will be reviewed.

By agreeing to be interviewed. You may agree to one and not the other or disagree with both of these

options. Participation is not compulsory. If you do choose to be interviewed, interviews will last one

to one and a half hour and will take place at a time you are comfortable during daylight hours on the

IED premises.

Important: Participation in this study is completely voluntary and you may withdraw from the study at any point of time. Participation in this study is not a requirement of this course and nor will it affect

your formal assessment in the course in anyway. Although I will be taking on a brief instructional role in the Conflict Resolution session in my role as CRRP volunteer I am not part of the core instructional team and will not be involved in any assessment or in your field- work component. I will be leaving for Canada in August and therefore will not be present till the end of the course. All data provided to the researcher will be kept completely confidential. Tapes, transcripts, data analysis notes and copies

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of course assignments (the original will be stored in accordance with IED protocol) will be destroyed

3 months after the completion of my thesis. This study may be presented in the form of an academic publication or presentation after thesis completion. All participants will be provided pseudonyms in the final report or in any reference to the study through publications or presentations to prevent

identification.

Action Plan Analysis:

If given permission by you, I will be analyzing your assignments after they have been reviewed by the

core instructional team therefore my review will not affect the assessment process in anyway. Any information that you provide to me shall be kept strictly confidential or used for research purposes only. The lead instructor in the Conflict Resolution component will not be aware of which course

participants are participating in the study, nor will she share her comments or assessments on your

work with me, and I will not share my views of your work with her. These measures will be taken to prevent your participation in the study from influencing your relations with the core instructional group or peer relations in anyway.

Interviews:

Interview questions will ask you about your understandings of conflict, conflict resolution and

conflict resolution education. In the interviews, the researcher is more interested in what your perspective is. Therefore, please do not feel that there are right or wrong answers to any of the interview questions. If you do choose to be interviewed, you may choose whether or not to have your

interview recorded. During the interview you may choose not to answer questions that you are

uncomfortable with and you can terminate the interview or withdraw from the study at any time.

Research Consent

There are four options provided below. Three of them ask your permission for participation in the

study in three different ways. The fourth option asks you whether you would like a copy of the final

report of the study and asks you to provide contact information if you so wish. You may request a

copy even if you are not participating in the study. Please check yes or not for the options provided below:

Participation in the study by allowing researcher to analyse my Action Plan Yes No

Participation in the study by allowing researcher to observe and analyse the Q-sort activity

Yes No

3a) Participation in the study by allowing researcher to interview me

Yes No

3b) Permission for interview to be recorded and transcribed

Yes No

4a) Request for complete final report of the study

Yes No

4b) Request for summary of final report of the study

Yes No

4c) Contact information for purpose of receiving final report/summary of final report of study:

Participant Name: Date:

Researcher Name: Date:

Important Note: Please complete both participant and researcher copy of the letter. You may keep the

participant copy.

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APPENDIX 2: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Interview questions:

e What sort of words does the term ‘conflict’ bring to mind?

e What examples of conflict can you think of?

e What would you describe as a conflict situation that was handled well? (Probing

questions such as: Who was involved? What processes were used to resolve

conflict? How would you suggest it was resolved?)

e What skills and strategies do you feel are important to teach students in a conflict

resolution education program?

e What do you feel should be the goals of a conflict resolution program in school?

e How is conflict resolution education relevant to citizenship education?

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APPENDIX 3: ACTION PLAN ASSIGNMENT SHEET

Devise an Action Plan

Planning Stage

- A brief description of the context where the action will be taken « What do you want to achieve? (aim)

- An accurate description of the action/activity you want to undertake

« A rationale for the action chosen « What methods and strategies are being planned? Why have they been chosen? What are

the advantage and disadvantages of each? « Make an action plan showing the sequence of the activity - identify the smaller parts and

the time required for each part ¢ How win information regarding the plan be collected/recorded and used.

Implementation Stage

« Implement each part of the activity. Collect/record data on the implementation. ¢ Use your data to reflect on individual roles, rights and relationships of all involved,

understanding of the nature and purpose of the activity, the setting in which activity was

done, the successes and challenges of the implantation. - If your plan needs to change identify what the change is and why.

NOTE: Follow this process for each part of the action plan. Use a book to keep a record

Explanation and interpretation of evidence - Analyse and interpret the data giving appropriate explanations « Communicate your information clearly using different media e.g. graphs, charts, tables,

photographs, commenting on what they mean. Use the information to construct

arguments, express opinions and draw logical condition. Do not include all the evidences

gathered but a selection that helps explain what happened or in support of your arguments /opinion.

Evaluation Critically review the process, the strategies/methods used to undertake the action/activity,

including the advantages and disadvantages of the chosen methods employed.

« Was the action plan followed? If not - why? Were any changes made to the original

plans? Why?

- To what extent were you personally involved in the action/activity

¢ Evaluate your own contributions, views and experiences gained during the action/activity - Also evaluate the contributions, views and experiences of others that were involved in

any way - What practical problems were identified and how were they overcome?

« Was the action/activity valid and justified?

¢ Why was the activity and appropriate one?

» Suggest improvements to the approaches/strategies used. Would you do anything differently if you had the chance again?

- List the resources or evidence referred to.

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