International peacebuilding and the Role of Education - Essay Example

Self-awareness denotes an individual’s ability to understand the self, personality, identity, as well as strengths and weaknesses. Researchers highlight that self-aware individuals are more likely to engage in positive approaches of conflict resolution. Conflict resolution has been defined a reconciliation process that promotes the peaceful tackling of conflicts. This research assumes that self-awareness is a precondition for developing awareness towards the world and enabling one to solve problems effectively while promoting social justice.

Education has been identified as one of the avenues that promote the development of self-awareness. More so, multicultural education offered in a multicultural setting presents a better avenue for the development of self-awareness. According to Zirkel, multicultural education presents five main dimensions, which may serve as factors that promote self-awareness (1149). One of the dimensions is content integration, which implies that students are introduced to a diverse curriculum with ideas from different authors.

Moreover, multicultural education is characterized by knowledge construction. According to Zirkel, knowledge construction makes an individual aware of how different frames affect the interpretation of the curriculum offered in the school. Multicultural education serves to reduce prejudice because of the positive inclusion efforts of both the students and the teaching staff. Moreover, Zirkel highlights that multicultural education promotes equity pedagogy, which ensures that all children have equal opportunities (1149).

A multicultural setting in education also serves to empower the school culture and proves to be more empowering to individual students because there is minima racism. Evidently, content integration promotes identity developments in students. Although the relationship is not simple, there is evidence suggesting that students who