Cultivating a Culture of Peace:
Peace Education, Conflict Transformation, and Whole-School Approaches for Teachers

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

Knowledge

• Distinguish between negative and positive peace, and between direct, structural, and cultural violence, using Galtung's foundational framework.

• Locate peace education within the UNESCO Recommendation (2023), the Council of Europe Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture, and the SDGs (4, 5, 10, 16).

• Identify the main approaches in the field — conflict transformation, restorative practice, intercultural dialogue, history education and multi-perspectivity, anti-racist education — and how they fit together.

• Recognise the role of identity, narrative, and historical memory in shaping conflict, and the role of teachers in mediating those narratives in the classroom.

  
  

Skills

• Run the four signature embodied exercises (Iceberg of Conflict, Three Violences Map, Web of Connection and Rupture, Story Bridge) with their own classes.

• Facilitate respectful classroom dialogue on difficult or contested topics, including across lines of identity, religion, language, and politics.

• Apply basic active-listening, reframing, and mediation techniques in everyday classroom situations.

• Recognise and respond to early signs of escalation, bullying, and exclusion in their schools.

• Design age-appropriate peace education activities for use across subjects.

  
  

Attitudes

• Approach conflict as something to be transformed and worked with, rather than avoided or punished.

• Hold a multi-perspectivity stance toward contested histories and identities.

• Develop teacher resilience and reflective practice for sustaining peace education work over time.

• Build a sense of agency in students that focuses on what they can repair, not only what they should oppose.

The course is structured around four embodied, classroom-ready signature methodologies that are introduced, practised, and adapted with participants during the week:

• The Iceberg of Conflict — a visual mapping exercise using a printed iceberg template to take any conflict from its visible positions down through underlying interests to the deep needs and values driving it. Built on the conflict-transformation tradition (Lederach and others) and one of the most useful tools a teacher can have for handling everyday classroom disputes.

• The Three Violences Map — a tangible application of Johan Galtung's classic distinction between direct violence (visible, individual), structural violence (built into systems and rules), and cultural violence (carried in stories, symbols, and language), used to audit participants' own schools and identify counter-actions at each layer.

• The Web of Connection and Rupture — a physical group exercise using a ball of yarn passed across a circle. Each throw is accompanied by a statement of shared experience or value, gradually building a literal web of connection. The web is then stressed, broken, and discussed: what does conflict do to a community, and what does it take to mend it? A foundational reconciliation method.

• The Story Bridge — a paired storytelling exercise drawn from inter-communal peace education practice in Cyprus and similar contexts. Two participants share short personal stories on a shared theme — home, fear, hope, the place they grew up — then together draw a 'bridge' of shared experience. The exercise teaches what storytelling can do that argument cannot, and gives teachers a practical method for using narrative responsibly in the classroom.

Alongside these signature methods, participants work with:

• Restorative circles and restorative questions

• Active listening and reframing techniques

• Multi-perspectivity and contested-history teaching methods

• Critical media literacy and counter-narratives against hate (drawing on the Erasmus+ HATE-LESS project)

• Trauma-aware facilitation principles

• Whole-school culture-of-peace planning tools

Each participant leaves the course with:

• A full toolkit containing the four signature exercises with all templates (iceberg template, three-violences mapping sheet, web debrief prompts, story-bridge facilitation guide) ready to print and use

• One fully designed peace education unit or activity sequence tailored to their own subject, year group, and school context

• A whole-school culture-of-peace action plan with concrete first steps

• A 'violence audit' tool adapted for their school

• A short reading list of accessible, classroom-relevant texts in peace education

• A personal reflective journal and continued-implementation plan

• A Europass Mobility certificate of attendance and a WAVES Certificate, both indicating learning outcomes and contact hours.

Nowhere else in Europe is peace education a daily practice rather than a unit in a textbook.

Nicosia is the last divided capital in Europe. A UN-controlled buffer zone runs through the city centre; Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities live a short walk apart but largely separately; and the question of how to teach children about a shared past, a contested present, and a possible common future is a live, daily one for educators on both sides of the line.

Cyprus offers a set of teaching contexts that you cannot find together anywhere else in Europe:

• A living laboratory of division and reconciliation, visible literally on the street, where teachers can see the everyday architecture of a frozen conflict and the everyday practice of crossing it.

• A walkable UN Buffer Zone with civilian crossings, including Ledra Street and Ledra Palace, that participants can experience directly during the course.

• Established peace education organisations such as AHDR and the Home for Cooperation that have been working on history education reform, intercommunal dialogue, and teacher training for more than two decades.

• A multicultural island society, shaped by Greek-Cypriot, Turkish-Cypriot, Maronite, Armenian, Latin, and migrant and refugee communities, where questions of identity, belonging, and coexistence are immediate.

• WAVES' grassroots networks of schools, educators, civil society organisations, and bi-communal initiatives, built through more than a decade of global education and peace education work on the island.

  
  

Add to this a Mediterranean climate, easy direct flights from across Europe to Larnaca, English widely spoken, the euro, and a vibrant cultural life in Nicosia — and Cyprus becomes one of the most pedagogically meaningful destinations in Europe for a course on cultivating a culture of peace.