Conference Agenda

In 2024, the highest number of state-based armed conflicts in over seven decades were recorded, with 61 conflicts across 36 countries (Rustad, 2025). Conflict is part of the current ‘polycrisis’ facing the planet and closely associated with declining social cohesion and social trust (Nord, Angiolillo, Good God, & Lindberg, 2025). Rising levels of social discontent and political polarisation make even long-standing liberal democracies more ‘fragile’ with much greater potential for autocratization and social conflict (Nord et al., 2025). Yet despite this growth in conflict, peace education has been a weak aspect of citizenship education for most liberal democracies – often assumed to be relevant only to conflict-affected nations (UNICEF, 2015). In addition, young people’s understandings of peace and conflict and the role they themselves may play in everyday peace-making has often been overlooked in citizenship education (Berents & McEvoy-Levy, 2015; UNICEF, 2015).

In this paper, I explore New Zealand young people’s perceptions of conflict in local and global areas and their everyday peace-making responses. Drawing on the concept of everyday peace (Mac Ginty, 2021), the paper examines the intersection space between local and global experiences of conflict. New Zealand is an interesting nation to investigate responses to peace and conflict given the ongoing impact of a recent colonial past (O’Malley & Kidman, 2017), and declining levels of social trust and social cohesion (Gluckman et al., 2023). The 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch New Zealand is also a stark reminder that ‘strong’ democracies can still exhibit and contain extreme violence.

Schools are one of the first public political institutes young people are exposed to and therefore are important sites for living and learning about democracy and peace (Zembylas & Bekerman, 2016). However, despite citizenship and peace education programme goals for cultivating trusting schools and a ‘culture of peace’, very few achieve their intended aims and there remains several issues with these initiatives (UNICEF, 2015). First, most start from a premise that the lack of peace is primarily and product of ignorance and therefore more learning about tolerance, social justice, equality and recognition by teachers and students is the solution (Zembylas & Bekerman, 2016). This overlooks the widely varying economic, political social and environmental contexts for critical peace education, and underplays the important cultural definitions and assumptions of peace education (Zembylas & Bekerman, 2016). Second, most initiatives overlook the communities of learning or schools themselves. Research confirms that connectedness to school and relationships with others play a role in the development of social and political trust (Flanagan, Stoppa, Syvertsen, & Stout, 2010). This draws attention for the need for greater understandings about effective peace education and how community and school contexts, everyday actions and affective approaches might shape citizenship education.

The paper draws upon focus group interviews with school-aged young people in New Zealand to explore their perceptions of violence and their everyday peace-making practices. Everyday peace-making practices are small acts of peace that have the capacity to disrupt conflict and possibly grow into something more substantial (Mac Ginty, 2021, p. 2). Theoretically, the paper aligns aspects of everyday peace with notions of lived everyday citizenship (Kallio, Wood, & Häkli, 2020) to examine how these inform citizenship experiences acts and understandings. Knowing these helps educators to build strategies for peace-making into citizenship curricula and educational experiences.

Young people across Europe increasingly feel ignored by politicians and perceive a lack of political effectiveness, participation, and representation (e.g. Albert et al. 2024). This leads to a decline in trust in political institutions, as shown by the latest International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (Schulz et al. 2025). Against the backdrop of recent and current crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis, in which the needs of the young population in particular have been systematically neglected, young people seem to be becoming increasingly alienated from politics. This is reflected not least in the popularity of right-wing populist parties across Europe (for an overview, see van der Brug et al. 2026). An educational science committed to fundamental citizenship education must address this growing challenge.

Political trust is a complex concept that is primarily discussed in political science research and in studies on political attitudes and socialisation. There is broad consensus in the academic literature that trust in democratic regimes is an important prerequisite for stable democratic structures (Warren 1999; 2017). At the same time, it is argued that distrust in the sense of political scepticism is equally important, as it leads to greater engagement in political activities and helps to hold politicians accountable (van der Meer & Zmerli 2017). As “tomorrow’s citizens”, it is particularly crucial for adolescents to have a certain basic trust in the government in order to grow a stable democratic mindset so that they participate in democratic processes (e.g., elections) as soon as they are eligible to do so. The development of political trust can be seen as an integral part of (political) socialization and is thus a central developmental task. In their “Comprehensive model of trust in education”, Niedlich et al. (2020) define political trust on the one hand in terms of social capital and thus social trust, and on the other hand as the result of citizens’ perception of the efficiency of political institution. Research emphasises the importance of experiences in educational institutions for the development of political trust (e.g., Abdelzadeh et al. 2014; Lundberg & Abdelzadeh 2018; Hooghe et al., 2012; Stals & Ziemes 2025). These studies present ideas on how political trust among adolescents can be strengthened. At the same time, they often differ in their conceptualisation of political trust. In addition, they lack a systematic discussion of the implications for education systems and citizenship education with regard to the various determinants and effects of political trust. Based on existing literature, this study addresses this research gap. Employing a scoping literature review, the existing literature on young people’s political trust is reviewed with the aim of (1) systematising conceptualisations, (2) identifying and collecting relevant factors, determinants and effects, and (3) systematising the implications for citizenship education.

Within educational theory, dialogue is frequently attributed moral and democratic qualities and framed as a practice that supports mutual recognition, ethical engagement, and subject formation (Alexander, 2020, Freire, 1970; 2000; Wegerif, 2019; Torres, 2021). From this perspective, dialogue is understood not merely as a pedagogical technique, but as a condition for learning together in plural and democratic societies.

This normative framing is reinforced at the policy level. International frameworks for citizenship education, notably those of UNESCO and the Council of Europe, position dialogue as a central pedagogical means for developing global citizenship, democratic culture, and civic competences (UNESCO, 2015; Council of Europe, 2016). In UNESCO’s Global Citizenship Education framework, dialogue is promoted alongside participatory and transformative approaches, such as project-based learning, collaboration, experiential learning, and social action, framed as essential for cultivating the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes required for a more inclusive and just world.

While dialogic research consistently highlights the benefits of dialogue for learning and participation (Wegerif, 2019; Steen-Utheim & Wittek, 2017; Engin, 2017), this does not preclude the need to examine how dialogue operates in normatively charged fields such as Global Citizenship Education. As Biesta (2011) cautions, dialogic frameworks often carry implicit, uncontested assumptions about citizenship and learning, reinforced by research aligned with policy priorities rather than situated enactment.

These concerns are particularly salient in contexts shaped by specific historical and institutional trajectories. In European countries such as Romania, where post-communist educational traditions have been more hierarchical and less dialogically oriented, the introduction of dialogic pedagogy in higher education raises questions about how dialogue is organised, taken up, and experienced in practice. Empirical research on dialogic pedagogy in such contexts remains limited (Safta-Zecheria et al., 2024), leaving gaps in understanding how dialogic norms are interpreted, negotiated, or resisted in civic and global citizenship education.

This study addresses this gap by examining how dialogue works as a pedagogical arrangement (Fenwick & Landri, 2012) in higher education, situated in a master’s-level course titled Global Citizenship Education, delivered in english within the Intercultural Counselling programme at a Romanian university. The course explicitly draws on UNESCO and Council of Europe framings of democratic culture and global citizenship, which makes it a useful site for examining how dialogic norms are enacted. Rather than approaching dialogue as talk, method, or inherently emancipatory practice, the study conceptualises dialogue as a set of organised formats, routines, expectations, and material supports that structure interaction in patterned ways. From this perspective, dialogue does not constitute participation in itself, but establishes the conditions under which participation becomes possible, intelligible, or constrained. Participation is therefore treated as the primary analytical object, understood as situated action unfolding within dialogically organised pedagogical arrangements.

Drawing on sociocultural (Bakhtin, 1981; Wegerif, 2019) and sociomaterial perspectives (Fenwick & Landri, 2012; Taylor, 2019; Hetherington, 2024), the analysis attends to the discursive and material dimensions of dialogic pedagogy. Participation is traced not only through speech, but also through silence, hesitation, and engagement mediated by objects, such as texts, prompts, and classroom materials (images, short poems, or a shared digital board that served as common reference points for collective reflection). These are treated as material mediators that shape what can be said, by whom, and with what consequences, while also enabling less exposed forms of engagement.

The study addresses the following research questions:

- How is dialogue organised as a pedagogical arrangement in a course on global citizenship education, in our given context?

- How is participation configured within the course’s dialogic pedagogical arrangements?