Understanding Taiwanese Children's Perceptions of Peace and Strategies to Make Peace: A Social and Cultural Perspective

Abstract

This exploratory study described Taiwanese children's perceptions of peace and what they think children can do to make peace. In-depth interviews were conducted with 60 Taiwanese children ages 4 to 18 years. The most predominant themes for the perceptions of peace were what peace is not, prosocial behaviors, positive emotions, and positive evaluations of peace. Approximately half of the children (48%) provided specific strategies for making peace. The suggested strategies generally were based on the child's immediate environment, such as "don't fight" "don't argue," and specific prosocial behaviors. 52% of children either said, "I don't know" when asked what children can do to make peace, or did not feel empowered to make peace. The initial findings were interpreted in terms of sociocultural issues, such as cultural heritage and upbringing, as well as within a political context.

“Parenting About Peace”: Exploring Taiwanese Parents' and Children's Perceptions in a Shared Political and Sociocultural Context

“…Although parents included multiple themes of positive descriptions of peace in their answers to children, the most impressive notions of peace from parents in the minds of children were the negative descriptions of peace. Similar results were found in Deng and Shih's (2009) study on Taiwanese children's perceptions of peace and strategies to make peace in the same child sample. Based on Symbolic Interactionism, children develop an understanding of peace through social interactions of verbal and nonverbal actions and communications with their primary groups (LaRossa & Reitzes, 1993).…”

“…As a result, we can concluded temporarily that peace education in the minds of Taiwanese children involves more of what not to do than what to do or what can be done. Deng and Shih (2009) reported that 52% of Taiwanese children, in contrast to 46% of children in Belgrade and only 9% of U.S. children (Walker, 2002), said that children could not do anything to make peace. More research is needed to investigate if this sense of vulnerability and powerlessness is related to parenting strategies for peace, culture, or other factors.…”

“…A structured interview procedure with open‐ended questions was selected to collect data. The interview questions used in this study were developed by a research team and have been used for collecting data in other research projects to study children's and parents' perceptions about peace‐ and war‐related concepts and issues (Deng, 2008; Deng & Shih, 2009; Myers‐Bowman et al, 2003, 2005; O’Malley et al, 2007). For this study, parents' and children's responses related to the research questions were used and analyzed.…”