S-CAR's Multitude of Initiatives
During the fall semester of 2012, the S-CAR Faculty Board encountered the invitation to consider the learning and network revolution as a way to frame many of the changes that have been occurring in the School in recent years. The move from the trailer to the world has positioned the School at a very interesting juncture of knowledge and policy. From the studies of narrative, peacemaking, genocide prevention and memory to the study of gender, the School is discovering its riches not in uniformity and consensus but rather in the vitality of many explorations opening new areas of inquiry and engaging new actors and new processes. We have seen the establishment of the Center for the Study of Narrative and Conflict Resolution, the Center for Peacemaking Practice, the Center for the Study of Gender and Conflict, but also the launching of the Program on Memory, History and Conflict and the Genocide Prevention Program. Recently the Insight Conflict Resolution Program has engaged the School’s faculty, students, and staff in examining every day challenges of law enforcement officers in Lowell, MA and Memphis, TN and in trying to reduce the severity and lethality of retaliatory violence through insight.
The dynamism within the School has moved in the direction of new initiatives making CRDC courses essentially a realizable paradigm of practice. How would then this diverse, rich, and lively community maintain its internal coherence, its synergy and integration? One of the future challenges of the School lies in finding a way to maintain its diversity while retaining the capacity to bring the explorations towards a clearer focus, shared learning, and common purpose. In hierarchical organizations, focus on shared learning and common purpose are dictated by those in authority and imposed through top down strategies. S-CAR’s flat organizational structure has encouraged an ethos of open exploration that allows students and faculty, staff and partners to innovate, explore, and experiment. From teaching to research, from practice to writing, the last few years have seen a multiplication of areas of engagement in which all members of the community (faculty, students, staff, and partners) are taking the lead to consider new ideas, explore new strategies, and engage in new ways. Leadership has been remarkably distributed not through top down processes, but rather through generative engagement and interactivity that has led to many innovations.
One of these are
as is well expressed by the new wave of Applied Practice and Theory (APT) offerings. Many colleagues have engaged in APTs in the last few years and many are preparing to do so in the upcoming academic years. The tradition of faculty-student collaboration around an inquiry that focuses on the application of practice and theory is capturing well one of the integration trajectories that the school may consider as it ventures into its next 30 years of existence. APTs have been initiated both by students and faculty in recent years and thanks to Lisa Shaw’s dedication to expand experiential learning, APTs have been led by staff as well. This openness is an important element of the revitalizing success stories of APTs. In many cases, APTs are offering a sustained dedicated relational space of learning where fundamental inquiries could be addressed over time by a team of partners. Different from a traditional course in which the syllabus has to assume an already established body of knowledge that is shared from instructor to learners, the APT assumes the unknown as a primary horizon of the learning experience. Successful faculty share with students their Socratic awareness of not knowing, choosing the unsettling platform of a shared inquiry as the method to address that unknown. APTs can fail miserably. At times they can become a dysfunctional entity where meaningful work is difficult and learning is problematic. This happens when the relational engagement of all participants is not open to the discipline of open inquiry. However, more often than not APTs have been remarkably creative, rich, and constructive.
The Reflective Practice APT team led by Susan Allen Nan engages with the challenges, methods, and opportunities of reflective practice in large inter-group conflict. This team focuses on developing methodologies for debriefing practitioners and fostering a community of practice within the S-CAR community. Particularly, APT members engage in reflective practice of research on societal renewal practices after violent conflict.
The Genocide Prevention Integration: Kenya APT applies knowledge being developed around integrated early warning systems to prevent and mitigate genocide and atrocities to the current situation in Kenya. Students will track and analyze ongoing, multi-level early warning and prevention efforts through Kenya's national elections in March/April, drawing on S-CAR's relationships with actors involved in these efforts, including community-based peacebuilders in Kenya, national players in Kenya and the US, and the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region.
The APT focused on Designing, Delivering, and Assessing Experiential Learning Activities offers students an opportunity to support the development of experiential learning in the CAR field, to apply theoretical knowledge gained through CAR courses, to engage in team-based self-reflexive practice and teaching, to co-produce knowledge about experiential learning for the CAR field, and to network with faculty and student colleagues in the region.
The Education and Conflict APT is focused on empowering its participants to engage in a deeper understanding of conflict resolution education models while also exploring new ways to push the field forward. One of the aims of this course is to encourage students to become scholars through collaborative learning, creativity, imagination, and critical thought. The emphasis falls on how we learn at S-CAR and how we learn through conflict resolution education.