The organizers of our upcoming 2025 conference at the University of Belgrade, Rethinking context as process when studying human development: Implications for theory, practice, and policy, promise to steer us away from “traditional views studying context as external and static”, as “external settings or arenas of development”. The invited speakers will invite us to consider alternatives that allow for more dynamic and interconnected conceptualizations of development.
Abstracts provided by the invited speakers suggest their work, although varied in specific focus (forced migration, student learning, violence prevention), is built on a common bedrock of contextualism, a broad, synthetic theory that roots thinking and knowing in the historic event. According to Stephen Pepper’s original formulation, the historic event isn’t some expired, bounded thing that happened in the past, but is an act, dynamically and dramatically alive in its present — alive in its context. Taking the historic event as a point of departure commits us to thinking about things in terms of verbs: making, moving, laughing, creating, solving, imagining, desiring. “These acts or events”, writes Pepper, “are all intrinsically complex, composed of interconnected activities with continuously changing patterns. They are like incidents in the plot of a novel or drama. They are literally the incidents of life.”
Come to Belgrade to hear and discuss how these ideas play out in the work of our invited speakers.
“Is an education for peace possible?” Piaget asked and attempted an answer to this question in 1934, in response to the League of Nations’ largely failed effort to promote international collaboration. He called for honesty: “education for peace” hasn’t worked; nations continue to be distrustful and view each other as impediments to their own nationalistic goals.
One problem, he argued, is a generational divide between youths and those who experienced the horrors of the first world war. The latter understand the reasons and merits of educating for peace. Youths, in contrast, view such teachings as yet another instance of adults preaching and moralizing over issues that have little meaning to the circumstances of their daily lives.
A second, related problem is pedagogical in nature. Although the teaching of international cooperation was widely embraced, it was “exceedingly superficial and avoided the real psychological motives of actions”, seeking to “fill the minds of students with… ready-made opinions (rather than) bring out in depth the intellectual and moral tendencies conducive to true collaboration”.
Piaget maintained that a true education for peace requires understanding the viewpoints of others, especially those that diverge from one’s own. The ability to adapt oneself for the purpose of foreseeing and explaining the “motives of the stranger”, requires distance from “false ideas and personal prejudices”. Our obligation, then, is to “learn to place ourselves in the community of other people”. “Above all let it be understood that, in all things, truth is never found ready made, but is laboriously elaborated through the very coordination of these viewpoints”.
Translated excerpts of his paper appear in an issue of The Genetic Epistemologist (Piaget on Peace and War, Vol. XVII, No. 3, 1989), JPS’s journal for many years. JPS members can access our archive of the GE on the membership page.
Our Toronto 2024 conference starts Friday, May 31, at 9:30 and wraps up Sunday, June 2, at 6:30. The complete schedule with individual presentations times will be published soon.
Congrats to Melanie Killen for an excellent article featured in the most recent issue of Scientific American (May 1, 2024). The Inclusive Classroom details her scholarly journey through the realm of moral development research and current explorations of how schools that create inclusive environments impact students’ development, and classroom climate and dynamics. Such inclusive programs have the “potential to better equip future generations to stand up to injustice”. Dr. Killen, a long-time member of JPS, is a professor of human development at the University of Maryland.
The proposal review process is underway and registration is open for both the hotel and conference (see the conference page on this website for links to registration). Although some will be waiting to hear the outcome of the reviews before registering, be aware that we’re expecting the hotel to book quickly. We secured an excellent room rate — CAN$239 — so register soon to insure availability.
