The Effect of Time and Safety on the Retention of Peace Education Concepts

Abstract

Peace education programs are widely implemented in schools and community settings worldwide, most often through short-term or time-limited interventions. Although these programs are widely used, research often measures success based on immediate, visible changes rather than on how children retain and express learning over time. This limitation is especially consequential for elementary-aged learners, whose learning develops gradually and is expressed in developmentally specific ways. This dissertation examines how elementary-aged children engage with and retain peace education concepts following a short-term instructional intervention, with particular attention to time and perceived safety. Using a mixed-methods design, the study integrates survey data and semi-structured interviews collected at multiple time points. Research was conducted in the Khanke Camp in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, a displacement-affected setting where participants were Yezidi children living in an IDP camp, and Culpeper County, Virginia, a comparatively stable educational environment examined as a smaller, exploratory case. Findings indicate that short-term peace education programs generate recognition-based engagement and surface alignment with program values but rarely produce sustained conceptual retention over time. Children most often recalled peace education concepts through narrative memory, repetition, and emotionally salient experiences rather than through abstract explanation. Physical safety and institutional stability did not function as straightforward predictors of retention; instead, learning gained salience when program content intersected meaningfully with children's lived experiences and social environments. By conceptualizing learning as a developmentally mediated process of meaning-making and foregrounding recognition alongside articulation, this study challenges evaluation models that equate learning with immediate behavioral change or verbal sophistication. The dissertation contributes a developmentally grounded and contextually responsive framework for evaluating short-term peace education interventions with children, emphasizing the analytic importance of time, context, and ethical restraint.