What do children say about peace? Integrating peace and EFL teaching in the classroom

Abstract

The socio-cultural realities in Colombia have generated different proposals and projects in several fields –education, health, etc. - all of them seeking the wellbeing of the population.  In the case of the education field, two projects are taken in this paper as the core of the proposal whose research question is what is the role of teaching EFL to children in the implementation of a national project based on peace? The first one, the English National Program 2015-2025: Colombia very well! and the second The Chair of Peace. Unfortunately, these two projects are being assumed in isolation in spite of sharing issues posted in the main objective they pursue. Through a qualitative research approach and an ethnographic methodology, this pedagogical initiative seeks to integrate those two projects in the classroom and to understand children as active participants in this process by promoting a creative writing focus. Thus, in the first stage of this work some EFL activities were developed with children from last year of elementary (9-11 year-age) in five cities of Colombia (Bogotá, Cali, Popayán, Pasto and Timaná); those activities gave insights about children’s voice in regard to peace and they also allowed to work with children´s English proficiency level as well. The second stage in the process consists of promoting students reflection on peace through a Story Contest in which they will have the opportunity to tell and share their thoughts, feelings, ideas, etc. about peace; at the same time that they will work on their writing skill in an upper level. Follow–up stages of the instructional and research design are already planned and in a process of development.