Panel: BUILDING PEACE AND EQUALITY: MULTI-FAITH THEOLOGIES AND PRACTICES CHALLENGING A VIOLENT, UNEQUAL WORLD



474.5 - "RE-CONSTRUCTING RECONCILIATION": HOW COLOMBIAN TEACHERS REFRAME THE CONCEPT OF RECONCILIATION IN CONFLICT-AFFECTED SCHOOL CONTEXTS.

AUTHORS:
Manco Villa N. (JCRS - Jena Center for Reconciliation Studies ~ Jena ~ Germany)
Text:
In the context of Colombia's armed conflict, reconciliation emerges not only as a political project but also as a pedagogical challenge. This research explores how school teachers in urban and rural areas of Antioquia - particularly in Medellín, Santa Rosa de Osos, and Yarumal - understand, apply, and transform the notion of reconciliation in their daily educational practice, especially in the implementation of the Cátedra de Paz (Law 1732, MEN) Based on qualitative fieldwork involving over 30 semi-structured interviews, the study adopts a reconstructive approach to analyze how notions of reconciliation oscillate between official peace discourses and the situation realities of classroom life. The teacher´s narratives reveal that reconciliation is not seen as a final goal, but rather as a dynamic and sometimes contradictory process shaped by personal experiences, institutional constraints, and territorial context. In rural schools, reconciliation is often connected with collective memory, activities with the community, beyond abstract, national strategies for peacebuilding. Urban schools, by contrast, emphasize discourses around social justice and structural violence. These differing contexts highlight how teachers re-signify reconciliation and adapt it to the concrete realities of their students' lives. This research provides insights into the emergence of a "pedagogy of reconciliation" (Walsh, 2009) in post-conflict societies and demonstrates how educators can become active agents in peacebuilding—not through top-down curriculum imposition, but through lived educational practice. This presentation will discuss central theoretical, methodological, and empirical findings from my ongoing doctoral research in education at the JCRS - Jena Center for Reconciliation Studies at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena.