ABSTRACT
When Gabi Salomon set aside his long research program on learning from and with media, and on a fundamental theory of transfer-among many other remarkable efforts during his distinguished career-it took many of his colleagues by surprise. Even more shockingly, he took on a set of problems that, by its own definition, is insoluble. How else can we interpret the essence of peace education, which defines itself as operating “in the context of intractable conflicts?” If the conflicts are indeed “intractable,” what possible impact can educational interventions, much less research, provide for its protagonists? Moreover, in a field (the application of psychology and other social science disciplines to education) long satisfied with research that rarely goes beyond the peripheral, how can scholars address problems that are so difficult, and that address issues so central to the human condition that we characterize them as intractable?
