The Challenge of Adapting to Global Complexity: Lessons from Peace Education Practices in Hiroshima, Japan

Abstract

This article examines how two peace educators in Hiroshima, Japan, expanded their curricular focus and pedagogical methods in the decades following the Second World War. It analyzes how they navigated the intersection of local and global peace education efforts as they developed their approach for engaging with increasing global complexity. The educators highlighted three emergent responses to this complexity over time: diversification of pedagogical strategies to employ participatory approaches inside and outside the classroom, development of broader interdisciplinary curricula with a widening array of peace-related themes, and use of global connectivity to intensify communication, encounter, and feedback among educators and learners in Hiroshima and other areas. This expansion created both tensions and opportunities as educators engaged with local historical memory of the atomic bomb, their nuclear disarmament work, and their growing interest in broader peace education issues. Hiroshima offers insight into pedagogical adaptation in response to global complexity and highlights the need for more robust research that can account for emergent pedagogical developments that take place within and across regional and global educational networks.