Kevin Kester – författare

This Modern Guide examines how traditions, values and social contexts in East Asian countries have shaped schools and universities across the globe and in turn how globalization, local forces, national imperatives and indigenous culture have impacted education in East Asia.Integrating traditional and innovative perspectives, chapters assess hybrid forms of educational policy and practice across diverse levels and themes. Drawing on comparative perspectives, expert contributors explore key issues such as citizenship education, lifelong learning, refugee integration, liberal arts and teacher vitality. Diverging from the Euro-American focus that dominates the field, this Modern Guide makes a unique contribution to the study of the history of education, comparative education and the cultural study of education.A Modern Guide to Education in East Asia is a valuable resource for scholars and educators in comparative and international education, as well as those interested in the history and sociology of education, education policy and teacher education. Researchers, students and practitioners with a focus on East Asia will also find this highly beneficial.

In this book, Kevin Kester details how the United Nations promotion of higher education for peace and international understanding sometimes unintentionally contributes to the reproduction of conflict and violence across diverse cultures. He shows this through an indepth examination of peace curricula, pedagogy and policy in one United Nations higher education institution, where he indicates how dominant philosophical and pedagogical models that signify acceptable peace education ultimately undermine the very goals of educational peacebuilding.Kester contends that theoretical and pedagogical training must develop beyond the dominant psycho-social, rational and state-centric assumptions that permeate the field today if higher education is to better contribute to personal and societal peacebuilding. Drawing from the fields of educational philosophy and sociology, he argues for new concepts of poststructural violence and second order reflexivity that can assist scholars in reducing conflict and building peace in lasting ways. He complements his fieldwork findings with personal reflections throughout the book to reimagine the transformative possibilities of peacebuilding education for the 21st century.