"Women Educating for Peace": A Participatory Video Project

by Jackie Kirk and Monica Mak

Me and myself, me and others, and me and the rest of the world.
So, those, I guess, are the three areas where I think we need to work on peace.

—Quote from Grace, a participant in the "Women Educating for Peace" Project

"Women Educating for Peace" is an exploratory research project focused on the lives and experiences of a group of fifteen women in Montreal, all concerned with issues of pedagogy and peace, but working in different ways, in different schools. Video was used to record interviews and group discussions, focused around key topics and/or activities, individual semi-structured interviews, and some classroom visits. The footage was then analyzed and worked into a thirty-two-minute bilingual video. The video is thus both process and product of the project. It is a record of the discussions held on topics relating to the women's own experiences of teaching for peace, to how they understand their work, and to the successes and challenges of it. We captured on film some of the women's activities in schools and together examined a small number of projects that were of most interest to the group, but our primary focus was neither classroom activities nor teaching strategies. The focus of the project, the discussions, and therefore the video, was women teachers' lives and experiences. The video–as a product of the project—is also designed to stimulate similar reflection from groups of teachers and educators and has already been used in this way in teacher workshops. It is now being disseminated among a wide group of interested educators, teacher educators, teacher networks, schools, and organizations through Télé-Québec.