Abstract
In 2005, Kitson and McCully introduced the ‘risk-taking’ continuum, representing the multiple ways in which teachers in post-conflict societies deal with the history of conflict in the classroom. ‘Avoiders’, at one extreme, refrain from teaching the violent past, while at the other extreme ‘risk-takers’ analyse multiple perspectives on what happened and why. Since their seminal study, scholars have increasingly studied the challenges and opportunities related to teaching the violent past. Yet, so far no study has empirically tested and applied the continuum. Drawing on a survey of 558 secondary school teachers in post-conflict Ambon, Indonesia, we analyse the proportion and characteristics of ‘risk-takers’ as compared to ‘avoiders’. Our results show that ‘risk-takers’ represent a slim majority. While ‘risk-taking’ is associated with political interest and higher levels of education, teachers who suffered much harm during the conflict, whose students belong to a religious group other than theirs and/or those who think conflict causes have been addressed are less supportive of conflict history teaching.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
