Moving Peace Education - Learning in polarizing conflicts as a visiting scholar in the USA
By Annalena Groppe - Understandings of peace and corresponding approaches to peace education are shaped by their context's conflicts and violence (Salomon 2002). Moving between places allows one to see specifics more clearly. As my dissertation project explores peace education in polarizing conflicts over democracy in Germany, this text reflects on learning and facilitation in a peace studies department in Virginia, USA, the societal context from which the concept of polarization originates. Showing the didactical relevance of those conflicts, I explore the tension and complementarity between elicitve/process- and actor-oriented, critical/ self-reflective, and trauma-sensitive approaches to Peace Education.