Peacebuilding Pedagogies by Crystena Parker-Shandal

Transform Your Classroom into a Space for Justice, Healing, and Belonging

Peacebuilding instructional methods can be powerful tools to address conflict, inequity, and exclusion in upper elementary and middle school classrooms. Peacebuilding Pedagogies shows how to cultivate nurturing learning environments, create space for students to critically engage with social issues and use restorative circles and critical race dialogue. These practices interrupt cycles of harm and silence, replacing them with connection, accountability, and care.

Dr. Crystena Parker-Shandal offers concrete, classroom-tested models for facilitating these conversations with integrity and intention. Through vivid, research-based examples of dialogue and discussion, she illustrates how students learn to connect personal experiences to broader systemic realities, developing critical consciousness, empathy, and social awareness in ways that are both rigorous and developmentally appropriate.

Drawing on practical strategies and richly contextualized case studies, this book offers a clear roadmap for transforming classrooms into inclusive, relational spaces where students and teachers can grapple honestly with racism, power, and oppression—and imagine more just ways of being together.