Peace in our time: How can education support the efforts against war? 

Abstract 

While we currently see the devastating effects of war, in Europe and the Near East, we are faced with the question: can education play a role in preventing this? The explicit idea of Education for Peace, or Peace Education, has existed for at least around a 100 years now, i.e. since Maria Montessori gave her seminal lectures on this topic in the inter-bellum period, mainly in Copenhagen and Geneva at the International Bureau of Education (IBE), which has been incorporated into UNESCO since 1969. In her view, education must build lasting peace, while all politics can do is keep us out of war. Since then, the field has been further developed and several Peace Education initiatives have been implemented worldwide, including in (post-) conflict areas. In this lecture, I will provide an overview of this field and argue that one branch of Peace Education, i.e. Education for Global Citizenship / Global Citizenship Education (GCED) represents its essence. Finally, I will present data of an empirical study on what global citizenship means to students at XJTLU and discuss the implications of the findings for the field. 

Bio 

Moritz Bilagher is honoured to be a member of the Academy of Future Education and, in particular, the Learning Institute for Future Excellence (LIFE) as a Professor of Practice in Global Citizenship Education (GCED). He holds a Doctorate in Education from King’s College London, a Master of Science degree in Educational Research Methodology from the University of Oxford and a Master of Science degree in Science Dynamics from the University of Amsterdam. In addition, he holds a Bachelor’s degree in Civic Education and a teaching license from Hogeschool Holland.  

As Professor of Practice, Moritz Bilagher obtained the majority of his work experience outside academia, mainly in international cooperation and development in education, with UNESCO (Nairobi, Santiago, Bangkok and Paris), UNRWA (Amman and Beirut), the World Bank-based Global Partnership of Education (Washington, DC) and the British government Agency for ICT in Education Becta (Coventry) in education management, research and evaluation. 

In his most recent assignment for UNESCO, Prof. Bilagher was Deputy Director and Acting Director of the UNESCO-UNWRA Department of Education, where he (co-) led the UNRWA education programme with around 22,000 education staff including approximately 18,000 teachers and over 500,000 students at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels.  

He hopes to bring his experience in the field to the university context, to the benefit of students and colleagues and his research interests include international education, Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, global citizenship education (GCED), peace education, educational assessment (psychometrics) and socio-emotional learning (SEL).  

我们时代的和平: 教育如何帮助我们反对战争？ 

摘要 

当我们目睹欧洲和中东地区战争的毁灭性影响时，我们面临这样一个问题：教育是否可以在预防战争中发挥作用？自从大约100年前，即在战间期间，玛丽亚·蒙台梭利在哥本哈根和日内瓦的国际教育局（IBE）（现已于1969年并入联合国教科文组织）发表了关于和平教育的重要演讲以来，和平教育的明确理念就已经存在了。在蒙台梭利看来，教育必须建立持久的和平，而所有政治所能做的就是让我们远离战争。自那时起，该领域得到了进一步发展，全球范围内包括在（后）冲突地区实施了若干和平教育举措。在本次讲座中，我将概述该领域的情况，并主张和平教育的分支之一即全球公民教育（GCED）代表了和平教育的本质。最后，我将呈现一项关于全球公民身份对西交利物浦大学学生意味着什么的实证研究数据，并讨论研究发现对该领域的影响。 

人物简介  

莫里茨·比拉格博士很荣幸成为未来教育学院的成员，特别是作为全球公民教育（GCED）实践教授加入未来学习中心（LIFE）。他持有伦敦国王学院教育学博士学位、牛津大学教育研究方法论理学硕士学位和阿姆斯特丹大学科学动力学理学硕士学位。此外，他还获得了荷兰应用科技大学公民教育学士学位和教学许可证。 

作为实践教授，莫里茨·比拉格的大部分工作经验都是在学术界之外获得的，主要是在教育的国际合作与发展方面，任职于内罗毕、圣地亚哥、曼谷和巴黎的联合国教科文组织（UNESCO）、安曼和贝鲁特的联合国难民署（UNRWA）、华盛顿特区的全球教育合作组织（Global Partnership of Education）、英国政府信息和通信技术教育机构Becta（考文垂）。他在教育管理、研究和评估方面有丰富的工作经验。 

在联合国教科文组织的最新任务中，比拉格教授担任联合国难民署（UNRWA）教育部的副部长和代理部长。他领导UNRWA的教育项目，该项目拥有约22,000名教育工作人员，包括约18,000名教师和500,000多名学生，涵盖小学、中学和高等教育。 

他希望将自己的实地经验带到大学环境中，造福于学生和同事。他的研究兴趣包括国际教育、可持续发展目标（SDG）4、全球公民教育（GCED）、和平教育、教育评估（心理测量学）和社会情感学习（SEL）。