I end the book by summarizing the goals of the project and noting future possible directions for researchers and practitioners. The purposes were to strengthen the connections between peace education, restorative justice, and psychology, while specifically offering conceptualized peace as a theoretical framework to richer understandings of youth cognition and identity related to contributing to building positive peace. The goal, however, was not simply to articulate a theoretical framework, but also to make connections to critical perspectives and application in programming and schools. The second part of the chapter thus turns to future directions in the fields of peace education and restorative justice. I discuss how conceptualized peace can help address questions in each before arguing that it could be applied as well to questions related to youth and climate change, racial/ethnic and economic injustice, and technological change.

Part II of the book opens with the first empirical chapter describing my dissertation research in Colombia. In the mid-2010s, I conducted a multiyear study of how young people in the country were thinking about peace and connecting it to their lives and identities. This chapter provides a contextualization – a key element of conceptualized peace – of the discourses and social representations related to peace as the Colombian government sought to end decades of armed conflict and build toward a broader harmonious society. The chapter summarizes the methods that involved integrating three datasets to provide multiple viewpoints and understand the context within which these participants were embedded. The young Colombians conveyed nuanced ideas about peace and themselves that related to these social representations, but also showed cognitive flexibility and local contextual influence as they made sense for themselves. I end the chapter by showing how conceptualized peace helps interpret the findings and adds overall value to the study and its implications.

This opening chapter introduces the reader to the main focus of the book, as well as how the author came to study peace education and restorative justice. The book aims to more deeply integrate an understanding of how young people come to form ideas about themselves with how they make meaning of their socio-ecological contexts. Peace education and restorative justice are two fields where we can more deeply integrate psychology into the project of building more harmonious social worlds. The chapter ends by detailing how the rest of the book is organized. The chapters are structured under three sections. First are the backgrounds, definitions, and opportunities in each field. These are then integrated into a theoretical framework – conceptualized peace – with examples of studies to provide further definition. Finally, the book ends with methodological approaches to applying conceptualized peace and future directions.

Similar to the last chapter, in this one I provide a foundation for understanding the field of peace education and its current state. Peace education is rooted in peace studies and closely connected to peacebuilding, though it may also be used in diverse contexts. For the purposes of this book, we focus on positive peace, or fostering the conditions that promote equity, justice, and harmony. A particular branch of peace education focuses on engaging young people in becoming aware of broader systems driving violence and then taking action to address these inequities. After summarizing this area of critical peace education, I then turn to debates in the field, which include how to define it, whether to center the individual (e.g., providing them with tools to promote peace) or broader systems, and the lack of empirical evidence. Still, I argue it is valuable to discuss and consider peace education both because of the widespread need to address violence at multiple levels, as well as the fact that it is employed in many settings across the world.

Explores the emerging subdiscipline of Peace Communication (PeaceComm), beginning with a discussion about the history of the practice, and the author’s ongoing quest to introduce a subdiscipline, dedicated to assessing and evaluating the critical efficacy of the practice. A methodological template for comparative global assessment and evaluation is offered, stressing the need to prioritize political conflict data and conflict zones-based context analyses, given that political conflict is caused by collective grievances related to “group”-level disadvantages and perceived disadvantages, not individual prejudice. The template is operationalized through the assessment of Sesame Street interventions into the Israeli Palestinian ethnopolitical nationalist conflict, drawn from field work in 2001, 2004-2006, and 2011. Best practices and other interdisciplinary contributions for practitioners are recommended, to understand conflict intractability where socialization, culture, and inter-“group” (mediated and interpersonal) communication intersect in glocalized conflict zone contexts, and in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, specifically. The interventions targeted children, who comprise the majority within conflict zones. The model used, mediated contact effects, is one of seven models and six subtypes of PeaceComm practiced historically worldwide the author has previously categorized, and is one of those most in need of PeaceComm scholarship, with potential to succeed but scarce evidence collected about its efficacy.

Increasingly, studies have focused on the potential of the education system to enhance social cohesion, in particular in multi-ethnic societies. Indeed, the education system can strengthen social cohesion by providing learners from diverse groups equal learning opportunities. Moreover, schooling can impart the “rules of the game” in a democracy and contribute to developing a common sense of belonging. In this chapter, we reflect on three strands of education that are generally not explicitly linked to social cohesion, but that could play a particularly promising role in this regard: multicultural, citizenship, and peace education. Innovatively, we study these educational approaches from an African perspective – for the continent is often overlooked in the current literature – analysing education in postconflict Côte d’Ivoire and in the ethnically divided society of Kenya. Notwithstanding promising contributions, we identify a number of hurdles to advancing social cohesion through education, including, most importantly, remaining biases and negative inter-group attitudes among teachers.

This chapter considers whether there is a trade-off between growth and equality, as economists sometimes assert, differentiating between vertical inequality (among individuals) and horizontal inequality (among groups). Most evidence challenges the supposed trade-off, suggesting greater equality increases growth, especially sustained growth. Inequality among individuals tends to limit human resources, while inequality among groups can lead to violent conflict, and both constrain growth. Greater equality also supports other desirable objectives, including better nutrition, less crime, and better health. The impact of growth on equality is analysed. This depends on how far earnings are spread via employment; and the redistributionary effects of tax and government expenditure. Labour-intensive activities tend to improve distribution, while capital-intensive ones, heavy reliance on minerals for exports and rising skill requirements tend to worsen it. For horizontal inequality, the impact of growth varies according to group location, economic specialization and policies, illustrated by the experience of Ghana, Peru, Malaysia and Northern Ireland. The chapter surveys policies likely to improve vertical and horizontal distribution, with examples drawn from many countries. Finally, the chapter considers the political conditions needed to support equalising policies.