History education in schools in Iraqi Kurdistan: Representing values of peace and violence

The Kurdistan Regional Government is currently implementing wide-ranging reforms in Iraqi Kurdistan’s education system. This qualitative study utilises critical discourse analysis to investigate the content of History Education (HE) textbooks (grades five to eight) and focuses on the policy and strategies the Ministry of Education (ME) is using to implement a peace education curriculum. It assesses both teaching methods and the effectiveness of efforts to disseminate knowledge, values, and skills. The ME’s top-down approach to peace education has faced significant resistance from teachers and parents, and it fails to consider the importance of hidden and null curricula. It focuses on the history of Iraq, Kurdistan, and Islam, glorifies war, excludes different narratives or interpretations, and fails to foster critical debate or enquiry. The curriculum appears to encourage violence and foster divisions between Muslims and non-Muslims, and the null curriculum is regulated to maintain the dominance of the group in power. Publisher Statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Peace Education on 4th December 2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/17400201.2017.1409198