ABSTRACT
Education for peace amidst an ongoing violent, existential conflict is a paradox. It is subversive politically, deviant socially, defiant culturally, and haphazard pedagogically. Systematic efforts to bring the concept of international peace into sharper focus and to examine its plausibility, as an alternative to the historic reliance on war and violence as a global regulating principle, commenced as a consequence of the horrors of World War I. The emerging field of peace studies and the developing practice of peace education are key projects in this endeavor (Salomon & Nevo, 2002; Weiner, 1998). This chapter will address the nature of learning processes that are of prime importance for peace education in contexts of intractable conflicts. The theory of aptitude, developed by the late educational psychologist R. E. Snow (see Corno et al. (2002) for a comprehensive account of the theory), will be employed to suggest some themes for the development of an instructional theory and to consider their application in the practice of peace education.
