Chapter 5: Incorporating Peace Education into EFL

The purpose of this chapter is to explore effective approaches toward incorporating peace education into university English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education in Japan. This chapter is grounded on the assessment of the author’s own educational practices in the six compulsory English courses for the first- and second-year students at the University of Shiga Prefecture, Japan. It focuses on the students during the 2015-2016 academic year, whose majors included Engineering, Architecture, Design, Biology, Regional Studies, and Ecology, but not English.

Peacebuilding education can be effectively integrated into English education, because the goal of the two needs to be the same: to cultivate students’ compassion and develop their relationships with others. The liberal arts courses analyzed in this chapter were designed to enhance the students’ knowledge, skills, and mindsets for English communication as well as for conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Conflict transformation is different from conflict resolution; while the latter refers to resolving a problem, the former refers to transforming a problem into an opportunity to build a sounder society. On the grounds that conflict transformation is inseparable from peacebuilding, the courses focused on developing knowledge about global issues, interpersonal communication skills, and social involvement. The courses paid more attention to social and psychological peacebuilding than political or economic.