Culture of Peace: A Pathway for Improving Coexistence in the Educational Community

Abstract

Educating for peace in contexts marked by uncertainty, social inequality and structural violence constitutes an urgent and complex challenge for educational institutions in Colombia because the reality of the country, crossed by prolonged armed conflicts and multiple expressions of violence, demands that the school assume an active role as a space for citizen training and social transformation. Therefore, within the framework of this research, the objective was to collectively construct an epistemological, theoretical and methodological proposal that redefines the culture of peace, aimed at strengthening school coexistence from the principles of an emerging, critical and participatory education, under a qualitative approach inscribed in the socio-critical paradigm, and the action research methodology. This study allowed the generation of dialogical and joint reflection processes between teachers, students and other educational actors. For the collection of information, various techniques were used, such as focus groups, semi-structured interviews, participant observation and collaborative workshops, which favored the identification of perceptions, problems and practices related to coexistence and the peaceful resolution of conflicts, in this way the results show collective appropriation. of a redefined culture of peace that directly impacts social relations within the educational community. Among the achievements that have been reached are the creation of spaces for dialogue, the strengthening of the sense of co-responsibility and the promotion of values. Therefore, it can be concluded that the culture of peace should not be understood only as an abstract ideal, but as an urgent need for the construction of a more just, equitable and respectful society of human rights. In this way, educational institutions consequently have the responsibility to consolidate themselves as strategic scenarios for the formation of critical subjects, committed to social transformation and the construction of sustainable peace.