The Multicultural Peace and Justice Collaborative: Critical peace education in a research training environment.

Abstract

The Multicultural Peace and Justice Collaborative (The MultiPJC) is a model of critical peace education embedded in a research training environment at a Christian university. The core theoretical foundation of our training model is principled egalitarianism. Through the lens of principled egalitarianism, we create action-oriented scholarship and research that focuses on how theory, research, and practice intersect with multiculturalism, social justice, and peace. We embody principled egalitarianism so that our training environment reflects our purpose, vision, and mission of promoting peace. In this article, we provide an overview of our model and we position our model within the greater context of the critical peace education literature and the scholarship of training environments. We also provide illustrative examples and offer implications for education, training, and research to evaluate the impact of The MultiPJC.

Making the leap to socially responsive research training in health service psychology.

“…Among the useful recommendations from experts was (a) recognizing the need for explicit training in leadership as an essential aspect of socially responsive research and (b) linking the module to already established models of research training. Among these are Gelso’s theory of the research training environment (1993; see McConnell et al, 2021, for a detailed example), models outlining research competency benchmarks (Fouad et al, 2009), and more novel frameworks such as QuantCrit that use critical race theory as a lens through which to understand and implement antiracist approaches to the application of quantitative methodologies (Suzuki et al, 2021).…”

A Multicultural, Social Justice, and Peace Intervention for Interpersonal Violence

“…Culturally indigenous community-based participation is "perceiving people from marginalized or oppressed populations as collaborative partners who have valuable perspectives and skillsets " (p. 194). We believe that fostering knowledge and skills related to Critical Peace Education (McConnell, Liu, et al, 2021) is vital to equipping emerging Christian scholars to competently engage in MSP initiatives that promote God's Kingdom purposes.…”

“…In keeping with these frameworks, we selected a transcendental, heuristic, phenomenological research method (Moustakas, 1990(Moustakas, , 1994 guided by constructivist grounded theory principles (Charmaz, 2017) to explore CCAPG in two phases. This integrated methodology aligns with the humility, empowerment, and collaboration principles outlined by McConnell, Liu, et al (2021). The goals of this study were to (a) phase 1: explore CCAPG's potential to promote inner and interpersonal peace in the clinical setting and (b) phase 2: evaluate CCAPG's potential for praxis-based learning of MSP principles in the research training environment.…”

“…Toward the end of the research process, the coauthors completed anonymous qualitative, reflective surveys and participated in a focus group. Survey and focus group questions entailed reflecting on the goals of CCAPG in terms of MSP values and their experiences of praxis learning relative to the three foundational principles of Principled Egalitarianism (McConnell, Liu, et al, 2021). In addition to research participants' surveys and the focus group, data for RQ2 included field notes from weekly research meetings, reflective journal entries/discussions, and email interactions (Charmaz, 2014).…”

Supporting peaceful individuals, groups, and societies: Peace psychology and peace education.

“…We end the special section with a reflective piece that offers a critical analysis of how peace education and its underlying goals can be integrated into the day-to-day work, organization, and training of psychology students. In the article, “The Multicultural Peace and Justice Collaborative: Critical Peace Education in a Research Training Environment,” McConnell et al (2021) introduce a new model of critical peace education grounded in a research training environment at a Christian university. Guided by principled egalitarianism, the authors facilitate action-oriented scholarship and research among their team members that emphasizes how research, theory, and practice intersect with peace, social justice, and multiculturalism.…”