Teaching about the Violent Past: Opportunities and Challenges for Teachers in Conflict-Affected African Societies

by Line Kuppens, Justin Sheria Nfundiko

Overview

Education plays a vital role in fostering reconciliation and teaching peace in conflict-affected societies. Conflict-history education, in particular, helps to replace fear and hatred with mutual understanding. While peace education has been explored across sub-Saharan Africa and beyond, curricular reforms often overlook teachers—despite their key role in achieving success.

Building on insights from education sciences, sociology, political sciences, memory studies and social psychology, this book introduces a novel and interdisciplinary framework to analyse secondary school teachers' engagement with conflict-history education, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. It focuses on three distinct locations—Kenya, Côte d'Ivoire, and the Democratic Republic of Congo—that differ in the intensity of violence experienced and the time elapsed since conflict ended.

This practice-oriented book aims at identifying teachers' needs to feel confident and competent in driving reconciliation in their classrooms and provides actionable policy recommendations and teaching strategies to support them in this essential role.

With contributions from Louis-Gervais Adomon Anoma, Mary Kange'the.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789462704725
Publisher:	Leuven University Press
Publication date:	10/15/2025
Pages:	220
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Line Kuppens is an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam, and visiting fellow at the Centre for Research on Peace and Development, KU Leuven. Her research focuses on peace education.

Justin Sheria Nfundiko is an associate professor at the Université Officielle de Bukavu and Université Catholique de Bukavu. His research focuses on the role of education in consolidating peace.

What People are Saying About This

Mario Novelli

This is a really excellent book that explores the role of teachers in exploring the challenging issues of teaching about the past in conflict affected contexts. With case studies from Kenya, Cote D'Ivoire and DRC it provides a sophisticated mixed methods research exploration of the challenges and potential of teaching about the past in highly contested contexts. It is well written, well-structured and a stimulating read that is useful for academics, teachers and policy makers concerned with issues relating to the role of education in conflict affected contexts.