Deepening Dialogue in Silent Spaces: Ireland’s pedagogy of peace.

Ireland has emerged from an era of protracted conflict, which claimed almost 4,000 lives and left a legacy of thousands of victims. It is difficult for people who lived through this era to speak openly with each other about what went wrong. This thesis acknowledges the presence of deep-rooted societal silence that accompanies violent conflict and explores the role of silence in post conflict communities. It describes the significance of education in enabling dialogue to deepen between communities of ‘others’. It describes the transitional processes impacting on the lead up to the most recent peace agreement, the Good Friday Agreement (1998). This thesis is an analysis of the dialogical process involved in it’s negotiation. It illuminates post peace building challenges for the community education sector. This research provides insights for community educators into ways to negotiate silence and to transcend difference through dialogue. The Agreement (GFA) promised parity of esteem to nationalist and unionist communities. Fifteen years after the GFA was signed and endorsed by both communities, the spiral of violence spins out of control during contentious commemorative parades. This thesis examines the complexities of conflict transformation as experienced by protagonists. It describes a philosophy of education that emerged within communities as a response to the challenges they faced. This philosophy of education is Ireland’s pedagogy of peace. As we face into an epoch of truth recovery and dealing with the past the role of community education in imagining a philosophy of unity is critical