ABSTRACT
One of the starting points for this chapter is a research project that a team at the Centre for International Education and Research at Birmingham have conducted on the needs of teachers and learners in global citizenship (Davies, Harber, and Yamashita 2004). The project was funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) under their Development Awareness Fund, in the context of the growth of citizenship education in schools and yet some uncertainty about the meanings of “global citizenship” and how it could be taught. Through interviews and observations in case study primary and secondary schools in the West Midlands, we therefore explored what was understood by this notion of global citizenship, and, under this umbrella, what it was that students and teachers thought should be learned. We found that the most outstanding concern for students was war and confl ict-and in the current context, not just historically. After giving some detail of these concerns, this chapter attempts to develop a typology of different ways that schools teach about confl ict before making more general arguments about the importance of peace education within a citizenship education framework, and the role of teachers in tackling both difference and indifference.
